During these weeks we have been working on the issue of “Storytelling” in our class “Exploring children’s literature in English” with Rachel.
What is Storytelling? Storytelling is narrating a story in a different way (with gestures, sounds, songs, etc.) and always from a narrative point of view. It is a technique that we can use in order to help our students when we are in class telling a story that contains difficult vocabulary or contents.
I think it is an effective technique in class because we can use it to tell stories in a foreign language and children will understood it.
As it cannot be otherwise, ourselves (future teachers) checked this technique. First we saw how to it had to be done, Michael Rosen and his “Chocolate Cake” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxQLITdOOc or “We’re going on a bear hunt” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytc0U2WAz4s were our teachers. With them we found that gesture, onomatopoeia, repetition and even rhythm are very important for students to understand a story in a foreign language. I recommend that you see these videos and that you use this resource in your classes.
Later, Rachel (our teacher) handed us a few paper with animals on it, and with most of my classmates being one of these animals-character, and, among all, we represent a story.
Many of my classmates have commented how they felt doing these activities, as you can see in other blog entries that I recommend you to read it. I will say that if we as adults enjoyed these activities, our kids will have great with this type of activity.
The next challenge we had to do was to create our own “Storytelling”. Most of the work was great and we laughed a lot. Also the majority work very varied primary topics as the Solar System, The Space, The Blood Components, etc.
I really enjoyed these classes because I realized how easily we can catch our student’s attention. Storytelling can be used in many different ways, but we have to take into account things such as the age, the topic or objectives we want to deal with, the level of English. As every material we use in our classes, we have to know how to use them to take an advantage of these resources.
On my opinion we can use storytelling just to have fun and relax, to improve our students’ linguistic competences, to introduce the topics we are going to work on, to learn new vocabulary or to improve their capacity of body language.
Good morning María! I have to say that I totally agree with your post. I really enjoyed the class in which each group represented his story, each one in a different and in an original way. When we was writting the story we realized that it was a difficult task to include all the contents that we wanted to teach withaout broke the structure of the story, but finally we found the way to do it. Then when my group and I was practising the movements of the story, we started to see that this difficult topic became easier because of all that movements, gestus and entonations. We really had a great time doing this project and then watching our classmates` work, dancing and repeating every movement they did.
On the other hand, I think storytelling is a very useful tool for us, like future teachers. Because we can use it with children since infant education until the last year of primary. As you have said, satorytelling is a good resource to cheer up children to read and to teach them some difficult contents too. Because with the story we are making it easier for them. Well, as you can see I´m a big fan of Storytelling! =D
Hi Yessi! Thanks for your comment! It has made me a lot of illusion that you share my ideas, and that you too enjoy with activity!
And…,although at first I kwon it was difficult to perform the job of story telling, I must say you did a great job and we also enjoyed representing your story !
Great post and comments! I suppose you already know it but this is experiential learning. I could have organised a theoretical lecture on the characteristics of storytelling and its advantages, but I did this instead. First, because it makes your learning more memorable; second, because you will take the theory from the practice, and third, because you already have a structure you can use in your lessons. Let’s innovate, imagination engineers!
Hi Raquel!
Thanks for commenting on my post!
Yes the truth is that using this methodology to teach this resource has been much more effective, and a great example for our future as teachers.
As you well say, it was easier to understand and very memorable (we know all the advantages that create this impact on your students have).
It was better than a theoretical class and of course, as you can see in our enthusiasm and comments, much more fun to have to do and practice it!