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Storytelling Fundamentals

This document discusses the fundamentals of storytelling for educational purposes. It covers characteristics of stories like using a holistic approach to language teaching and supporting natural language acquisition. Some key stages of storytelling are outlined as context, conflict, climax, closure, and conclusion. The document also provides guidance on techniques for effective storytelling performance and examples of pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading activities that can be used alongside stories.

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Pameliz Obando
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157 views13 pages

Storytelling Fundamentals

This document discusses the fundamentals of storytelling for educational purposes. It covers characteristics of stories like using a holistic approach to language teaching and supporting natural language acquisition. Some key stages of storytelling are outlined as context, conflict, climax, closure, and conclusion. The document also provides guidance on techniques for effective storytelling performance and examples of pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading activities that can be used alongside stories.

Uploaded by

Pameliz Obando
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Storytelling Fundamentals

Professor:
Marcos Andrés Acevedo Pavez
[email protected]
Characteristics and Stages of Storytelling

• We help children learn language when what we ask them to do is purposeful,


meaningful, socially significant and enjoyable.
• They need to feel supported when they attempt to do something i.e. learning and this
could happen when they are given context based tasks and activities.
How can we make our classroom activities purposeful, meaningful
and engaging?

Stories use a holistic approach to language teaching and stories support natural acquisition of
language. We believe language is learnt in contexts and in chunks, not in isolation, word by word
or sentence by sentence. Stories are meaningful inputs i.e. comprehensible inputs (Krashen
1985) that children receive as they listen to and tell stories.
To have in mind
Characteristics

• Skills: prediction, guessing, hypothesizing and message decoding.


• Motivation
• Creativity and Imagination
• Oral Fluency and extended discourse
• Cultural Input

Extended Learning Workshop:


https://premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org/teachers/professional-development/storytelli
ng

Further Reading:
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/storytelling
Storytelling and intercultural understanding

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 empathize 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 commonalties of cultures around the world
Performance skills

Remember to...
• vary the volume, pitch and tempo of your voice (enunciate clearly and exaggerate expression)
• use your face, body and gestures (let your body speak)
• make your body and face respond to the tale
• have a clear focus and maintain concentration
• maintain engaging eye contact with the audience/ individual listeners
• create a charismatic presence (make the audience believe in you)
• use different, exaggerated character voices
• use your space/ be dynamic
• remember to pace yourself
• always remember to regain your style as a narrator
• use silence and pauses to add dramatic effect
Let’s practice

• Story 1: The Haunted House


https://
learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/sites/kids/files/attachment/short-stories-the-haunted-house-t
ranscript.pdf

• Story 2: The little Red Riding Hood


https://
learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/sites/kids/files/attachment/short-stories-little-red-riding-hood
-transcript.pdf

• Story 3: Why Anasi has thin legs


https://
learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/sites/kids/files/attachment/short-stories-why-anansi-has-thin-
legs-transcript.pdf
Stages of Storytelling

• Context
• Conflict
• Climax
• Closure
• Conclusion
Performance techniques

Telling a story can captivate an audience; that is, with the right techniques and a little
practice.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZwY5BeYcyo
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

Do you like Children’s Literature? Follow this teacher Instagram account:


https://www.instagram.com/thetututeacher/? utm_medium=copy_link
Pre Reading Activities

Storytelling helps Pre-Reading Skills: Print awareness (helping kids make the connection
between printed letters and words and the ideas and stories they represent), vocabulary
building, print motivation (interest in reading, in books, and in how they work)

• Speed chatting. Prepare one or two simple questions related to the topic of the reading.
• Short conversations. Encourage the learners to have a discussion about the topic of the
reading.
• Brainstorming. Examples:
• Visual to introduce & build background knowledge.
https://
• The title.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=26z8lcCG
• Take a (virtual) Field Trip. j2Q
• Pictionary.
Further information:
More examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-
QlOGDeADuc
https://englishpost.org/examples-of-pre-reading-activities/
While-Reading Activities

Activities that connect to a 1. Questioning strategy


2. Picture this
cognitive stage: Bring in art related to book's time or themes.
• Summarizing, retelling, Compare, describe, and discuss.
3. Fictional friends
interpretation.
Who of all the characters would you want for a
• Interpretation and friend? Why? What would you do or talk about
together?
expansion of event.
4. What if
• Selecting, ordering, and Write about or discuss how the story would
interpretation of event. differ if the characters were something other
than they are: a farmer, another gender, a
different age, or someone from another
country.
Post-Reading Activities

Examples:

• Pantomime: Act out a scene you choose or the class calls out to you while up there.
• Postcard: Write to a friend, the author, or to a character about this book. Write as if you were the character or
author and write to yourself.
• Mapmaker: Draw a map of the book's setting.
• Collage: Create an individual or class collage around themes or characters in the book.
• Timeline: Create a timeline that includes both the events in the novel and historical information of the time. Try
using Post-Its on a whiteboard or butcher paper!
• Mandala: Create a mandala with many levels to connect different aspects of a book, its historical time, and
culture.
• Draw: Translate chapters into storyboards and cartoons; draw the most important scene in the chapter and
explain its importance and action.
• Board game: Have groups design board games based on stories then play them. This is especially fun using
gamification as a teaching strategy.
• Second chance: Talk or write about how it would change the story if a certain character had made a different
decision earlier in the story (e.g., what if Huck of Huckleberry Finn had not run away?)
• Sing me a song: Write a song/ballad about the story, a character, or an event in the book.

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