Paramount Story Wranglers

Paramount Story Wranglers is a seven-week in-school residency led by a team of professional teaching artists, where third graders learn the foundations of creative writing through arts-integrated lessons designed to motivate students and improve their writing skills, confidence, creativity, and storytelling. During residencies, each classroom writes hundreds of stories as a class, in small groups, and in individual journals. In the last week, students perform their original stories for their class. Following the classroom residency, professional actors — known as the Paramount Story Wranglers — transform students' original stories from page to stage in an original hour-long musical skit performance for the entire campus! This performance is the linchpin of the program. Each student author introduces themself and proudly lets the audience know, "This is my story!" Residencies serve all 3rd grade classrooms on a campus, and each weekly lesson includes 75 minutes of instruction from three to four professional teaching artists. The TEKS-aligned lessons have consistently been shown to increase writing skills, improve attitudes towards writing, and grow collaboration skills. Classes are offered in English or Spanish depending on participating students' primary language. Stories that are written in Spanish are performed in that language during the final performance. Photo by Axel Buecker.