Storytelling Starters ~ Key
Saturday, May 25th, 2013Problem: storytelling in schools is in decline.
Question: what can be done about it?
This week I’ve been given some good ideas. Here’s one.
Response Archive:
The Response Archive idea was sent to me by Hilary Minns of Warwick University. It involves noticing, then noting down, key moments in children’s responses to oral stories they’re being told. The children can be of any age. The responses could happen either during the telling or after in the course of some talk or activity following the telling.
Recording the responses would be a way of beginning an archive of evidence about the value and benefits of storytelling in education. This is greatly needed in my view and Hilary and others agree.
Example: The Gingerbread Man
Here is the example Hilary sent me of the kind of responses that might be captured for the Response Archive. One student on her storytelling module at the University recently told her class the story of The Gingerbread Man. Afterwards the student role-played being the Gingerbread Man. The children came up with questions. These are the questions they asked:
Why did you run out of the house?
How did you escape from the oven?
How come you were real when you were made out of playdough?
How did you get on the fox’s tail?
Why did you trust the fox?
Did your leg hurt when the fox bit it off?
What was on the other side of the river?
Good, hey? The questions demonstrate how keenly the children had listened to the story and how intelligently they were thinking about its implications. For anyone of the view that these days, it’s difficult to get children to listen, think and speak, let alone be creative, the example could be key.