Friends of the Earth have created a very powerful short plea for the “men in suits” to act on what they already know to avert disaster due to climate change. Using a child as narrator and some clever visual storytelling, the video is a graphic summary of the problem and the need for urgency.
I found
[Continue reading Video conversations tap storytelling techniques]
In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood. Take the tale in your teeth, then, and bite till the blood runs, hoping it’s not poison; and we will all come to the end together, and even to the beginning: living, as we do, in the middle. ~Ursula Le Guin, Dancing at the
[Continue reading Bite till the blood runs]
Someone said to me the other day that good storytelling can’t be taught. People are storytellers or they aren’t, and no amount of coaching can change that.
The same could be said about the best dancers, musicians, and painters. Some have such innate talent that, when they move to music or pick up an instrument or
[Continue reading 10 tips for turning students into storytellers]
The tips below can also be used as writing prompts and not just in schools. I started using these years ago, when I taught a group of third-grade students to become storytellers.
One child in particular stands out in my mind. Robbie was a shy boy, the kind who can easily be overlooked because he never
[Continue reading 15 ideas for expanding students’ understanding of a story]
My storytelling career began back in Rochester, New York, where I was a school librarian in a suburban community (Greece) north of the city. I didn’t think of it as storytelling when I told high school students stories in order to lure them into reading. Sometimes it backfired when a whole classroom of students would
[Continue reading 10 ideas for bringing storytelling into the school day]
What Robert Frost said of a poem can also be said of a well-told story. “It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.” There are few more effective tools than storytelling for developing listening skills, teaching predictive thinking, enhancing language and communication skills, and building a positive atmosphere in the classroom.
William Smith, one
[Continue reading Storytelling in the Classroom]