Taconic Hills 4th, 5th, And 6th Graders to Tell Stories At Ancram Opera House Next Month

Back for its fourth year, Real People Real Stories Taconic Hills Edition, which features 4th 5th, and 6th grade students from Taconic Hills Elementary School, will take the stage at Ancram Opera House on Saturday, Nov. 4 at 2PM. This community event is free and open to the public.

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic’s first year, Ancram Opera House director Paul Ricciardi began conducting storytelling workshops for 5th and 6th graders at Taconic Hills Elementary School. The project supports the school's literacy and writing pedagogies by utilizing live storytelling as a step towards composing personal narratives.

Because of the program's popularity, the workshops have been expanded to include 4th graders and now a team of AOH teaching artists leads more than 300 Taconic Hills students in the techniques of storytelling. Using the same methods developed for Real People Real Stories, AOH’s popular adult storytelling event, students learn to identify the key components of a good story, how to tell it, and how to write about it.

The storytelling program has become an ongoing component of the middle school writing curriculum. By participating in the program in grade 4, and then repeating it in grades 5 and 6, students can concretize valuable writing skills and enter junior high school as well-prepared writers. 

The storytelling program at Taconic Hills has been praised by parents, teachers, staff, and, perhaps most important, the majority of students, who report a newfound interest in telling and writing personal narrative.

Real People Real Stories Taconic Hills Edition is made possible by the generous sponsorship of Stewart’s Shops, Berkshire Bank, and the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Fund for Columbia County. 

Ancram Opera House is an award-winning theater located in New York's Hudson Valley. Housed in a historic Grange Hall, AOH has since 2016 presented groundbreaking theater and musical performances by nationally recognized theater artists. AOH receives significant annual support from the New York State Council on the Arts and in 2023 was awarded a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. For more information visit www.ancramoperahouse.org.
 

Real People Real Stories Taconic Hills Edition

Saturday, Nov. 4, 2pm

Ancram Opera House, 1330 County Route 7, Ancram, NY, 12502

Free and open to the public

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