Storytelling

What is Storytelling?

Why should my students use Storytelling?

Speech Enhancement
· Learning and using the differences between denotation and connotation.
· Becoming aware of your speaking style and its roots.
· Developing an awareness of enunciation, pitch, volume, speed, tone, and emotional and vocal quality.
· Practicing and evaluating speech construction.

Performance Improvement
· Developing conversational tone from a written, improvised, or memorized text.
· Becoming comfortable speaking in front of others.
· Exploring physicality, such as proxemics, movement, posture, facial expressions, and effective use of gestures.

Communication Development
· Practicing defining life from personal experience.
· Developing verbal communication effectiveness through analogy, metaphor, and imagery.
· Respecting others and building self esteem through listening, being heard, and sharing personal narratives.
· Passing on wisdom through experience

Where does Storytelling fit into my curriculum?

Everywhere! Sheila Daily, in Tales as Tools: The Power of Story in the Classroom, says that "when stories come to school, everybody wins." This is true because stories extend personally into many different areas of the curriculum across the grade levels. Vocabulary development, entertainment, and developing an appreciation of ones culture and respect for others. Story also meshes well with education because the nature of the story lends itself to exploring almost any subject or concept.

How do I start?

There are four main areas of concern in using and telling stories. They are:

The Story
· Identify your audience interest to maximize connecting concepts and plot lines.
· Find good stories that are meaningful and have a clear plot, beginning, middle, and end.
· Plan success by preparing for distractions and projecting problems before they arise.

The Teller
· Learn the story. Memorizing an outline, and craft the story as you tell it.
· Plan your presentation. Just as a classroom session, aim for an introduction, story time, and possibly questioning and/or reflection.

The Environment
· Eliminate distractions by knowing all that you can about your audience.
· Know your performance space to avoid distracting elements.

The Audience
· Attract the attention of your listeners with the basic actor/storyteller tools: mind, body, and voice. Be clever, animated, and have vocal variety.
· Engage your audience through participation elements such as refrain, cued actions, sounds, and possibly individual parts.

What does Storytelling look like in a lesson plan?

Using Storytelling in a lesson may look something like this:

Ask students to sit in a circle.

Review that humans have five senses, and write on the board the five senses (touching, smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing).

Tell a story about a sensory experience, choose any of the senses to tell about.

Ask the students to stand up and reenact your story as you retell it. Remember to include setting, time, plot, physical descriptions, and any people/characters.

Tell students that it is now their turn to tell a story, but it has to be about one of the senses. As a student tells a story as you interview them for setting, time, plot, physical descriptions, and any people/characters, and then choose players to play it out as you retell/narrate their sensory experience. Remember, everyone should get a turn!

National Theatre Standard and Benchmarks
Standard
1:
Demonstrates competence in writing scripts
Level 2 (Grade K-4)
1.
Selects interrelated characters, environments, and
situations for simple dramatizations
2.
Improvises dialogue to tell stories
3.
Writes or records dialogue
4.
Plans and records improvisations based on personal
experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and
history
Level 3 (Grade 5-8)
1.
Creates characters, environments (e.g., place, time,
atmosphere/mood), and actions that create tension
and suspense
2.
Refines and records dialogue and action
3.
Creates improvisations and scripted scenes based on
personal experience and heritage, imagination,
literature, and history
Level 4 (Grade 9-12)
1.
Constructs imaginative scripts that convey story and
meaning to an audience
2.
Improvises, writes, and refines scripts based on
personal experience and heritage, imagination,
literature, and history
from <http://www.mcrel.org>