In this first post I´m going to talk about the importance of storytelling in the learning process of the children. The way they learn through the different stories and the characteristics of a good storyteller.
Let´s start! I´m sure all of you can remember a couple of storybooks of when you were children. Stories that leave a sing inside you. Books that you remember it fondly. Books that make you smile when you think about it.
Well, in my opinion this happen because when you listened or you read that story it was the best moment ever to receive it. The story shocked you so much that you remember it in the adulthood (difficult thing).
This it wasn´t be possible without the help of the “guide”. Normally this guide was your parents, your teachers or someone near to you when you were a child. He or she choose the story, choose the moment and, the most important thing, choose the way of telling you the story. All of these are the tasks of a good storyteller, which turn a normal story in a meaningful story.
The good storyteller, apart from the tasks mentioned, has to enjoy the story. He has to live the story like the first time he heard it, trying to spread his feelings to his audience. He has to create and to maintain the mystery until the last page he read to catch the attention of the little public every moment. For this task is very useful to make lot of mimic or gestus and to use the body language to help them to understand the hole story, like we have seen at Michael Rosen´s videos.
For all these reasons, I think, we have to be really grateful to our parents and to our teachers for chose that wonderful stories for us. Now, like future teachers, we have to taking to account the importance of chose one book and no other, because is in our hand to wake up good feelings about reading and consequently a good reading habit.
In my case some of my meaningful books are:
- “El Principito” of Antoine de Saint Exupéry
- “Elmer” of David Mckee
- “La calle” of Enric Larreula
And my “guides” were my parents and my Infant Education teacher, Marisa. Thank you.
I invite you to comment about yours.
Yéssica Segarra
Hi Yessica!
I mostly agree with you.
As future teachers, we should improve our linguistic skills, mainly the speaking one. If we want to be good storytellers, we need to practise, to create and to imagine good stories. But, the question is…if there are some people who do not like literature…how can we achieve that?
In my opinion, firstly, we have to love literature to transmit to each other this revating art and secondly, we have to love children.
The second point, I hope, it is the easiest for us. But not the first one. How can we love literature? Choosing the books, stories or songs by ourselves. That is the point I disagree with you. If we want to make children love literature we have to adapt the stories to their likes or maybe, let them choosing by their own.
Finally, I also think that we need to employ body language, gestures and sounds to be a good storyteller. We should transmit to the audience the real context and in some cases, as Michael Rosen does, without any word.
*Note: one of my favourites is also “El Principito” ;).