Bringing ELA to Life: Arts Integration for Character Creation with Story Pirates

Teachers will explore techniques to help students create engaging characters that leap off the page. We’ll explore everything from the broad strokes of creating new characters, to fun methods of “showing not telling” characters with concrete details, to a mini-lesson on quotation mark placement for character dialogue that students will enjoy! All of this will be supported by arts-integrated techniques that will heighten student engagement, but which will feel natural and comfortable for educators, and fit easily within their usual teaching practice.

The Story Pirates believe that kids are creative geniuses. All of them.

Story Pirates is a family media company that produces and creates content inspired by kids to inspire kids and their imaginations. They are best known for their multi-award-winning, top-downloaded family podcast, the Story Pirates Podcast, which takes stories submitted by kids and turns them into sketch comedy and songs. They’ve released critically acclaimed middle grade books with Random House Children’s Books and several award-winning albums, all based on ideas from kids around the world. These songs and sketches are often performed on the podcast or their albums by artists and celebrities like Kristen Bell, John Oliver, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sara Bareilles, Seth Myers and many more. In partnership with their non-profit arm, Story Pirates Changemakers, they produce Story Pirates Presents: SPTV which is currently in its second season airing on public television in various cities. Story Pirates produced the first Looney Tunes podcast for Warner Brothers Animation, Bugs and Daffy’s Thanksgiving Road Trip.