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Learning Goals and Standards
At StoryArk, we undstand the need to adhere to certain learning
goals, and we will work within your curriculum and standards.
The New York State Education Department’s
Learning Standards for the Arts read as follows:
Standard 1: Creating, Performing
and Participating in the Arts
Students will actively engage in the processes that constitute
creation and performance in the arts and participate in various
roles in the arts.
Standard 2: Knowing and Using Arts
Materials and Resources
Students will be knowledgeable about and make use if the materials
and resources available for participation in the arts in various
roles.
Standard 3: Responding to and Analyzing
Works of Art
Students will respond critically to a variety of works in the
arts, connecting the individual work to other works and to other
aspects of human endeavor and thought.
Standard 4: Understanding the Cultural
Dimensions and Contributions of the Arts
Students will develop an understanding of the personal and cultural
forces that shape artistic communication and how the arts in turn
shape the diverse cultures of past ad present society.
The following is our mission at StoryArk:
Our Mission
The ability to negotiate the language of words
and pictures is a necessity in our visually stimulating environment,
and the ability to tell stories in that language is an asset to
any nuanced vocabulary.
At StoryArk, we aim to enrich a student's abilities
to communicate by immersing them in comix and visual iconography,
teaching them visual storytelling and thus enabling them to participate
in their complex cultural landscape.
Our specific goals meet the above standards
and we strive to place emphasis where your curriculum calls for
it.
Our Learning Goals
1. After StoryArk Workshops, students will
be able to:
- communicate using words and pictures
- make leaps from their visual to verbal vocabulary
- draw and combine simple shapes into readable
icons
- imagine new stories from visual cues
2. After StoryArk Workshops, students will
understand
- how simple body gestures and expressions
communicate different moods and ideas
- how pictures and words communicate differently
than either do alone.
Two Sample Workshops Focusing on Learning Goals
(Goals in parenthesis)
Jump to:
Ages 12-16
Ages 9-12
For older teens, we recommend exercises on our larger exercise
page here.
Ages
12 -16
week 1
- Introduction to face making. 10 minutes.
Drawing random shapes, by adding eyeballs, and then mouths,
we create a face capable of communication. Look at different
expressions and how they are drawn. (1.3, 2.1)
- Next we juxtapose our images of faces of
extreme expressions: anger, happy, sad, etc. with random static
images: food, horses, airplanes, etc. What is the character
saying in these panels?
- Introduction to gesture. 10 minutes. Handout
of stick figures in physical activities and expressions: playing,
jumping, angry, etc. We practice these. (1.3, 2.1)
- Merging faces with gestures, we look and
laugh at the different combinations. Angry faces with non-angry
gestures, etc. (1.3, 2.1)
week 2
- Based on what we learned last week, we ask
students to draw a single cartoon panel of a character in action.
We pass along and ask fellow students to draw a single follow-up
or reaction panel. We are basically creating very small stories.
(1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 2.1)
- We hand out panels of cartoon art (from
Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy), and ask the students, based on the
previous exercise, to imagine a reaction or follow-up panel
to, and draw it. (1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 2.1)
- Depending upon time, we may ask them to
do the above in sequences of three panels.(1.1, 1.3, 1.4, 2.1)
Week 3
- We show random combinations of two comic
panels, and ask the students to verbally describe what how these
could be part of one story. Describe what must be going on.
Can you then draw one panel that helps bridge the ends of the
story you just described? Teacher draws this panel, and taking
suggestions from class, draws as many panels as are necessary
to make the story communicate fluidly. Then students are paired
up to do the same thing. (All goals)
week 4
- We hand out "How
to read Nancy". (20 minutes) (1.1, 1.3, 2.2)
- Looking at last week's strips or preexisiting
strips, we try to re-tell them with only pictures, and then
with only word balloons. Can we boil down to simple shapes,
silhouettes and words? (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.2)
Week 5
- Drawing 4 panel stories from simple plots
handed out. Limericks by Edward Lear are good. (1.1,1.2,1.3,
2.2)
- Next we draw a reporter reporting on one
of the limericks. Try showing the reporter describing the action.
Emphasize switching between the reporter anticipating the action
and then the action itself. Does switching make it funnier or
more interesting? Are there times that we can combine both into
one panel, or times when we should elimate part? (1.1, 1.2,
2.1)
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week 6
- Larding and reducing: Larding: Taking a
preexisting story and adding panels throughout to “fatten”
up the narrative. When do we alter the story, and when we do
merely alter the telling of the story? Reducing: how few panels
does it take to convey the story we’ve created? Can we
reduce a story to just 2 panels? (1.1,1.4)
week 7
- Cliff to Cliff- We give students one panel
to begin with depicting a character on a cliff with a variety
of objects around him or her. The students are then asked to
get the character over to the other side. Many clever solutions
come from this, including clever workings of the objects scattered
around. Others grow super powers (slowly) and others are rescued
after sending messages. This exercise is about sequence but
also about problem solving, and often tells us a lot about the
student's personalities and learning styles. (1.4, 2.1)
week 8
- Teacher acts out Hamlet's "To be or
not to be" speech and hands out Will Eisner's comic of
the same. Look at the gestures and body language. Can we retell
a couple sentences of this our own way? (1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2)
- Handing out a literary passage of character description, (from
Dickens, perhaps), can we create a using mostly gesture? Students
are asked to come to class next time ready to describe something
small that happened to them that week.
Week 9
- We go around the room and tell the students
we are going draw a 1 page "diary strip" describing
something that happened to them. Everyone writes down in no
more than 4 sentences what happened, and we go around the room
reading. Teacher works to boil down the main idea.
Then we draw our strips in week 9 and 10. (All goals)
week 10
- Final drawing and big show!
Other possibilities:
- Mix and match- Connect 5 images with characters
reacting with their different senses. How have you drawn smell,
taste, sound, sight, touch? Can you draw something else that
communicates these senses? (1.1,1.2
- MUSIC VIDEO. Create a music video We listen
over and over to a Cole Porter or other theatrical song. We
choose a 30 second passage and draw the "video" to
go with it.(1.3, 2.1)
- If we watch a cartoon, can we storyboard
it?
Ages 9-12
Week 1.
- Spend 10 minutes with Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. Looking at
one panel at a time, we ask the students to shout out what is
happening in each panel. We start off simple: "a boy walking",
etc. And move to more complicated, "a boy running away
from a girl standing on a fence" to very complex: We include
silent and non-silent examples. (1.1,1.2)
- 20 minutes. We handout sheets with blobs and geometric shapes
on them and ask the students to add eyes, mouths, etc. Can you
make one ANGRY? Can you make one SAD? Then: what is the character
saying? (1.2, 1.3)
- Next we juxtapose our images of faces of extreme expressions:
anger, happy, sad, etc. with random static images: food, horses,
airplanes, etc. What is the character saying in these panels
now? (1.2, 1.3)
Week 2.
- Drawing lessons- learning the basic shapes of drawings: circles,
dots, lines, squares and triangles. (1.3)
- What happens next? Passing out Nancy panels, we ask students
to draw what happens next in each story. (1.1,1.3,1.4)
- Draw a 3 panel strip of the best thing you ever did. Maybe
you hit a home run, or jumped really far or found a frog. (1.1,
2.2)
Week 3.
- Tell the same strip as last week focusing on a person hearing
the story. (How would a person react? Bored? Scared? Excited?
Empathetic? Envious? (2.1)
- Tell the same strip about a copycat who tries to do the thing
that happened to you. What happens to that character when he
or she tries it? (1.1,1.4, (2.1)
Week 4
- Draw your diary strip from last week silent. (1.2,1.3,2.1)
- Draw our diary strip from last week using only dialogue. In
word balloons. (1.2,1.3,2.1)
- If time, hand out Edward Lear limerick, and draw this into
a comic strip. (1.1, 1.2)
Week 5
- Pretend you are an animal. Can you draw
yourself pretending to be that animal? first draw yourself telling
us who you are and what you are going to become. Then show us
how you change. Show us how you act as that animal now. What
is the best thing that you ever did as that animal? Can you
draw that? (1.2, 1.4)
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Week 6
- You are a reporter in an animal comic. Report on the action
that animal is doing. Then take out a panel and replace it with
only the reporter (paste over the panel!) When do you only need
the reporter's response. Are there times when the reader doesn't
need to see it? (1.2)
Week 7
- Storytelling Nancy- teacher works with class to figure out
how many panels we need in between two Nancy panels. (1.1, 1.4)
- The students close their eyes while the teacher describes
a setting and a character. Can you draw the scene and what happens
next? (1.1,1.2,1.3,2.2)
Week 8
- Play charades. Can we now go and draw what we just saw? (1.2,1.3,2.1)
Week 9
- Students work to make their own comic strips (all goals).
Week 10
- Final drawing and big show!
Other possibilities:
- Mix and match- Connect 5 images with characters
reacting with their different senses. How have you drawn smell,
taste, sound, sight, touch? Can you draw something else that
communicates these senses? (1.1,1.2)
- MUSIC VIDEO. Create a music video We listen
over and over to a Cole Porter or other theatrical song. We
choose a 30 second passage and draw the "video" to
go with it. (1.3, 2.1)
- We look at Bill Keane's classic comic strip The Family Cicrus,
and create a comic about space the way he did (character's path
around their house.)
- If we watch a cartoon, can we storyboard
it?
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