Dows Lane Students Retell Folk Tales With Professional Storytellers

IRVINGTON, NY — Dows Lane Elementary School first-graders, who have been immersed in fairy tales for the past few weeks studying the essential elements of a story, worked with professional storytellers for a week recently.

Award-winning authors and recording artists Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, the husband-and-wife storytelling team known as “Beauty and the Beast Storytellers,” visited each classroom to teach students how to retell stories, according to a district spokesman.

They retold the folk tale of “Why Hawk Soars in the Sky” as the students supported them with gestures and vocalizations. They also told the story of “Why Loon is a Water Bird” before teaching the students how to be expressive and retell the same story aloud.

“These professional storytellers supplemented our unit in a unique way,” teacher Danielle Jelenek said. “They helped our students explore the storytelling component of these types of stories and how to be more expressive and vocal about the stories they're telling.”

During the sessions, the students listened to a folk tale and discussed it with the storytellers before practicing to retell it themselves and be expressive through their actions and words.

The storytellers, whose visit was generously funded through a grant from the Irvington Education Foundation, will work with kindergartners from March 14 to March 16.

Photo credit: Irvington Union Free School District.