Storyboarding, or picture writing, is the origin of all written languages, used by ancient cultures before text evolved and as a natural bridge to text. The Chinese language was built using pictographs.

Egyptians used storyboards, or hieroglyphics, first etched in stone and later written on papyrus, to organize a complex society and to rule the ancient world. In our classroom, we use a variation of the story board.

We call it the story tray! Story trays are one of several tools introduced during circle time that work for younger students for whom the visual and the concrete are helpful elements in absorbing abstract ideas.

For this activity specifically, we recreated the story of The Ants are Marching, by Dan Crisp. To begin with, students surrounded the story tray to reenact the story. They were then each given a character in the story.

As the story progressed, students placed their “character” onto the tray. We did this until the story was completed.