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Tips from a Master Storyteller:
Read or Tell?
Stories have the power to go straight into people's hearts. All the way back to the first campfires, humans have been learning and passing along knowledge through stories. Before there was reading there was, always and everywhere, the sound of people telling stories.
Reading to children is a fine thing, but simply telling them a story can be magical. When you tell a story, the listener feels that anything can happen -- it's not all preset by the words on a page or by the images on a screen.
It's your call as to how to present stories to children, but if you possibly can, try telling your class stories about real people rather than reading to them. Yes, it takes more time and we know that can be hard to find. But listen to Sue Tannehill, teacher and professional storyteller, and decide if it's worth the time.
Revelations from a great storyteller
Sue tells us that oral storytelling works in the classroom for a lot of reasons we hadn't thought of. For one, it's a "mutual act," requiring the teller to transmit the words and feelings with which to make images, and the listener to create those images. While mutually engaged in this process, they are in "another kind of time," says Tannehill, and in this other kind of time, a real and special community is created.
The process is also fleeting; it cannot be repeated. "You can never recreate the exact circumstances of a story, a teller and an audience." Because there is no remote to control storytellers, no rewind buttons on them to make the story come out again, people listen with an attention they don't give to a repeatable experience.
In this era of all-pervasive television with its pre-made images, Sue assures us that the storyteller magic still works; kids lock on to this fleeting experience, capturing it and holding it in images they create out of the sounds, sights and feelings that the storyteller gives them.
The idea of getting that kind of attention from students sold us right there on telling stories rather than reading them!
But how do you do it?
We were ready to learn how to be good storytellers, so Sue gave us her system.
- First she reads it twice, and remembers it as if it were a movie.
- In that process, she finds an image or emotion that dominates the story. Whatever it is, she'll keep it in mind as she tells the story.
- She draws a stick-figure progression of images that play out the action, with a few key words as reminders.
- Using only these simple images and key words, she does a practice run.
- She then tries the story out on one listener and asks the person to tell her what the dominant image or emotion of the story is.
- After any necessary course corrections, she's ready for an audience.
- When she's finished telling the story, she is absolutely quiet. Her advice at this point: Let there be silence after a story; in that silence, the children will absorb the story's meaning.
Sue's audiences attest that when she tells a story, it's felt, understood and remembered.
Going heart first
Whether you take the storytelling option or just read to your students, please remember this storytelling tip: trust that the children will absorb the story's meaning just from hearing it. If you immediately leap into dissecting the story, you switch them from heart to head, and the wholeness and power of the story is lost. Ease into comprehension softly, by the activities we've provided, rather than by quizzes about numbers, vocabulary, or other facts. Especially with the very young, whose hearts are open, don't derail the natural process by asking them to switch suddenly from absorbing with their hearts to reasoning with their brains. The brain forgets; the heart remembers.
This excerpt is from the book Giraffe Heroes: More Giraffe Stories, an excellent source for real stories about real "Giraffe Heroes." If you are looking for resources for character education and values curriculum help, share these stories with your classes and let them share how they are "giraffes", sticking their necks out to make the world a better place.
To learn more about Giraffes and the Giraffe Program, visit The Giraffe Project website. The Giraffe Program is a K-12 curriculum that teaches kids about real heroes and gets them going on lives of courage, caring and responsibility, and the Giraffe Partners Trunk--everything a business or club needs to help a classroom full of kids to stand tall.
Copyright © 1999 The Giraffe Project, all rights reserved.
Please contact The Giraffe Project for permission to reprint or distribute.
Posted with permission by New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: info@newhorizons.org