What is a Story Vine?

A story vine is a really fun activity where you create a vine using yarn, rope, or anything that is thick enough to be a vine. Then, create artifacts using paper, felt, pictures, etc. that can be glued onto the vine. The purpose of the story vines is to refer to the artifacts glued onto the vine to be able to retell the story without reading the book. This activity is inspired by Sometimes Reading is Hard by Robin Bright, page 91.

How We Prepared

My class started prepping by finding a children’s picture book we wanted to create a story vine on. I chose the Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch. Then, we created our own story vines using braided yarn and craft supplies. The stickiest part for me was choosing what I wanted to include for artifacts. There are so many great options in the book to choose from. For example, the book mentions horse bones left over from the fire. I personally would have never thought to create horse bones as an artifact, but many of my peers did!

Working With Students

Day One

The first day, we all met at our local book store Huckle Berry Books, where the wonderful staff created a space for us to do our activities! We started the activity by breaking into small groups of 5-6 grade 2/3s and 4-5 student teachers and read The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Musch in celebration of Paper Bag Princess Day, March 7th. After reading the picture books, we explained story vines to the students once more (their teacher front-loaded the project before they came to the bookstore) and showed the students our story vines we created the previous week. Each student was then given a planning sheet where we had to create six quadrants to plan six artifacts. After we approved their planning, they went to the supplies table and grabbed yarn, rope, markers, felt, and we prepped the hot glue guns. We spent the remainder of the time helping students create their story vines.


Day Two

The following day, the student teachers met our grade 2/3s at their elementary school. As a group, we reread the story once more before we created groups with the grade 2/3s, the teacher candidates, and the two kindergarten classes. Each group had around 4-5 kindergarteners, 3-4 grade 2/3s and 3-4 student teachers. The focus of the activity was for the grade 2/3s to share and retell the story to the kindergarteners. The activity was so much fun! Every student in my group was able to clearly retell the events using their story vine artifacts. However, most students focused on sharing their artifacts rather than telling a story through their artifacts. The Kindergartens were so intrigued by the vines- they loved to look, touch and feel the story vines, adding a sensory element to the vines. After, we read three Robert Munsch books to all the students in our group!

British Columbia Connections

Grade 2 and 3

Big Idea- Language and story can be a source of creativity and joy.

Curricular Competencies- Recognize the structure and elements of story. Explore oral storytelling processes.

Content- Elements of story. Reading strategies. Oral language strategies.

Bright, R. (2021). Sometimes reading is hard : Using decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies to inspire fluent, passionate, lifelong readers. Pembroke Publishers, Limited.

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