Storytelling

Creating a storytelling classroom

The approach of conversational storytellers:

1. The first step is an introductory lesson that presents learners with a model story and follow-up questions to raise their awareness of the story’s generic structure

 The approach of conversational storytellers:

1. The first step is an introductory lesson that presents learners with a model story and follow-up questions to raise their awareness of the story’s generic structure as described by Eggins and Slade .

2. Step 2 is a follow-up lesson that invites learners to apply the Eggins and Slade framework and practice telling stories of their own. This practice is combined with a fluency development technique

3. In Step 3 teachers make conversational storytelling a regular feature of their classes and help their learners add interest to their stories through the use of devices such as extreme adjectives, idiomatic expressions, and direct speech.

2. Step 2 is a follow-up lesson that invites learners to apply the Eggins and Slade framework and practice telling stories of their own. This practice is combined with a fluency development technique

3. In Step 3 teachers make conversational storytelling a regular feature of their classes and help their learners add interest to their stories through the use of devices such as extreme adjectives, idiomatic expressions, and direct speech.

Teaching strategies to Include Stories:

1-Share your own stories, just for fun:

2-Use stories as introductions.

3-Use stories as illustrations:

4-Tie storytelling to learning goals:

5-Tell stories to engage reluctant learners

Types of Stories

• A true story from your own life.

• A true story from the life of someone you know, like a friend, family member, or neighbor.

• A true story from the news or a current event.

• A story that took place sometime in history.

• A fictional story, with made up characters or events.

Listening to stories allows the teacher to introduce or revise new vocabulary and sentence structures by exposing the children to language in varied, memorable and familiar contexts, which will enrich their thinking and gradually enter their own speech.

Listening to stories develops the child’ s listening and concentrating skills via:

1. visual clues (for example, pictures and illustrations),

2. their prior knowledge of how language works,

3. their general knowledge.

This allows them to understand the overall meaning of a story and to

relate it to their personal experience.

Why Storytelling Works

In its simplest form, storytelling remains a powerful element of communication, with the narrative being equally as compelling as essays and textbooks.

They humanize learning. It offers us the opportunity to connect to like-minded characters, or see the world literally from within someone else’s skin. Stories touch our emotions and make us laugh, cry, fear, and get angry—a sharp contrast to a plain old presentation.

As a learning tool, storytelling can encourage students to explore their unique expressiveness and can heighten a student's ability to communicate thoughts and feelings in an articulate, lucid manner.

These benefits transcend the art experience to support daily life skills. In our fast-paced, media-driven world, storytelling can be a nurturing way to remind children that their spoken words are powerful, that listening is important, and that clear communication between people is an art.

Have Students Tell Their Stories

As you incorporate your own stories, recognize how they connect with students on a different level. But why keep the power of storytelling to yourself? You can also actively help students become their own powerful storytellers, too!

Allow students to write, illustrate, and tell their own tales. The way you incorporate this may vary depending on your curricular goals, but it is essential that children understand how to tell a good story and how this relates to effectively accomplishing an objective.

Students can use stories in their essays and argumentation—they can help in remembering processes or formulas, or connecting events with one another. The opportunities are endless, and easy to employ.

There are a number of ways in which storytelling can enhance

intercultural understanding and communication.

Stories can…

• allow children to explore their own cultural roots

• allow children to experience diverse cultures

• enable children to empathise with unfamiliar people/places
• situations

• offer insights into different traditions and values

• help children understand how wisdom is common to all peoples/all cultures

• offer insights into universal life experiences

• help children consider new ideas

• reveal differences and commonalities of cultures around the world

Telling a story can captivate an audience; that is, with the right techniques and a little practice.

Remembering and retelling the plot:

• map the plot as a memory technique

• use story skeletons to help you remember the key events

• think of the plot as a film or a series of connected images

• tell yourself the story in your own words

• create your own version of the story (adapt and improvise)

• retell it numerous times until it feels like a story

My own attitude:

 Storytelling is a kind of self reflection. It is a kind of dialoguing for the learner with himself then with others. This is active the learning which we we call and seek for.

Language is a means of communication.  How wonderful if the learner expressed his story with his attitude! It is a kind of analysis and analysis is one of the high levels of learning in Bloom's taxonomy of learning.  Look at the examples below:

Learners who listen can recall the events through their natural times and order them through composing events through sentences using:

Sub-sequence of events::

First of all.................

Next,..........................

Then,............................

Later,.............................

After that,.......................

Finally,...............................