Story vines are a creative way for students to showcase their comprehension and story re-telling skills by creating a physical depiction of the story. Give students yarn and other art supplies to create a vine of the story! According to Robin Bright in Sometimes Reading Is Hard, story vines are meant to “develop students’ reading skills while collaborating and contributing to meaningful classroom talk” (Bright, 2021).

Indigenous Perspective

The use of story vines fits beautifully into the First Peoples Principals of Learning.

*Learning is embedded in memory, history, and story:

After the students create their story vines, they are to re-tell the story out loud. An article by Cassidy Taylor, MLIS. discusses the importance of oral storytelling and how it connects us to each other as well as our place.

I feel it is important to make this known to students when doing this activity in the classroom.

The Paper Bag Princess Story Vine

This is a digital story vine I created for the book The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch. The cool thing about story vines is that they can be created with yarn and art supplies, but also digitally using platforms like Canva.

Re-telling the Story with my Story Vine

There once was a beautiful Princess who wore a stunning dress and had plans to marry the majestic Prince Ronald.

One day, a big fire-breathing dragon came along and burnt down the Princess’ castle. Burning all her dresses and kidnapping Prince Ronald.

All she had left to wear was a brown paper bag. Filled with anger, the Princess made her way to the dragons’ cave to save the Prince.

Once she arrived at the cave, she manipulated the dragon and tired him out to the point where he passed out from exhaustion. This was her chance to save Prince Ronlad and finally get married!

When she managed to find and release the Prince, he did not react how she expected. He was hung up on the fact that she was dirty and wearing a paper bag. He was disgusted and made that known to her.

Instead of getting upset, she called the Prince a bum and ran off into the sunset. The two did not get married.

What I just did shows exactly how I would digitally use story vines in my classroom. I definitely prefer the physical way because of the oral storytelling aspect and the way it is hands-on and more fun for the students. This is definitely an activity I will be using in my classroom one day!