The Christmas Wind Story Project
A unique literacy initiative I pioneered in 2017 involving 1,700 students from two continents and in every province/territory of Canada.
The Christmas Wind Story Project is “all about the power of sound and listening.”
— CBC
What is The Christmas Wind Story Project?
Few of us have to wonder or ponder about very much these days. The answer to most big and small questions is a mere click or tap away. It’s like we all have our own personal fast forward button … which is marvelous, and also a little troubling, because wonder is the mother of discovery, and discovery is the fuel that takes us to new frontiers. What would happen if our kids lost the wonder gene?
The Christmas Wind Story Project is more like a “pause” and “rewind” button, and was conceived in the Fall of 2014 and piloted with 1,700 primary students from 2015-2017 in every province and territory of Canada, and with four grade one classes in Melbourne, Australia.
Listen to CBC Podcasts about this project (in Labrador, B.C., The Yukon, Quebec, Newfoundland and New Brunswick) HERE
Read Newspaper Coverage of The Christmas Wind Story Project in Northwest Territories, Quebec (and a second Quebec article), PEI, Newfoundland, Labrador City, Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario (Timmins, Muskoka, Burlington, Clarington and Aurora)
Read the Teacher Report Card on The Christmas Wind Story Project
Read Article about the project in the Summer 2017 issue of CANSCAIP News HERE
Listen to a Version of the Story Voiced in Part by the Quebec Christmas Wind Students HERE
Watch How the Project Was Explained and Introduced to Students HERE
Learn About the Schools Who Participated in the 2016 Cross-Canada Program HERE
Learn About the Schools Who Participated in the Cross-Continent 2017 Program HERE
Flip Through the “Trading Cards” that Connected a Nation HERE
A unique literacy experiment, this project had students from JK-Grade 6 listening to a story in a format akin to an old, serialized radio show. Each week, for 8 weeks, an audio portion of a story was uploaded to their class webpage and they were asked to illustrate what they imagined. The book they drew pictures of was not yet on the shelves (my picture book The Christmas Wind, illustrated by Brooke Kerrigan, was launched fall 2017 by Red Deer Press), so the students had a clean, uninfluenced slate to start from. Fuelled by my desktop computer in Newmarket, Ontario, this project brought students back in time to when things were un-googleable, and wonder and wait weren’t foreign words.
An important outcome of this experience is that it represents an untapped way of learning, giving students the opportunity to exercise their powers of creativity, imagination and visualization. One teacher remarked that she was surprised at the detail in the pencil drawing of one Kindergarten student as it, “showed a huge understanding in her that I didn’t realize was happening as she doesn’t verbalize a great deal.”
Over 13,000 student drawings were generated, revealing both regional diversity and a compelling emotional unity. In our lightning fast world, even those as young as four waited (not so) patiently for the next installment of the story. (Binge listening was not accessible to them.)
A cool aspect of this project is that we used technology to bring kids back to a time when technology didn’t do so much thinking for them. In an age when the google button is making it easy to not imagine, the Christmas Wind Story Project connected diverse classrooms (as far as 17,800 km apart) through the spoken words of a story, igniting the wonder gene in 1,700 students from two continents and in every province/territory of Canada.
Why is this important? Among other things, visualization is critical to reading comprehension, giving students a richer reading experience, improved detail recall and greater personal connections with the text. In other words, strong visualization skills lead to not only a greater understanding of the words, but also to a more meaningful interaction with the story, which itself promotes continued reading. (Harvey & Goudvis 2000). Learn more by clicking the links to the left.
