STORY Telling Workshop

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Why Storytelling? More Reasons...

Gaining Verbal Skills
Becoming verbally proficient can contribute to a student's ability to resolve interpersonal conflict nonviolently. Negotiation, discussion, and tact are peacemaking skills. Being able to lucidly express one's thoughts and feelings is important for a child's safety. Clear communication is the first step to being able to ask for help when it is needed.

Imagination
Both telling a story and listening to a well-told tale encourages students to use their imaginations. Developing the imagination can empower students to consider new and inventive ideas. Developing the imagination can contribute to self-confidence and personal motivation as students envision themselves competent and able to accomplish their hopes and dreams.

Passing On Wisdom
Storytelling based on traditional folktales is a gentle way to guide young people toward constructive personal values by presenting imaginative situations in which the outcome of both wise and unwise actions and decisions can be seen.

Storytelling: The Heart and Soul of Education

The cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of the Pacific region gives Pacific educators an excellent opportunity to enrich children’s learning. Diverse points of view, personal histories,
prior experiences, and learning styles can be used to greatly enhance teaching and learning. The professional literature suggests numerous ways for teachers to design instruction so that all children learn. Storytelling is one way—it costs nothing, is enjoyable, and can be used anywhere and at any time.

All people have a basic need to share stories. Stories organize experiences and record important happenings.
As common forms of discourse, stories are of great interest and significance in language and literacy development, especially when considering the increased linguistic and cultural diversity
of students in Pacific classrooms. Stories enable teachers to learn about their students’ cultures, experiences,
and meaningful relationships. Through the sharing of stories, teachers and children “create the potential for new connections that link them together inside a new tale”

Why Are Stories Told?

Stories first arise in the context of relationships when small children acquire the ability to verbalize
their experiences. With this verbalization, children become the “narrated selves” of their own lives, sharing interpretations with others. Like adults, children use narrative to shape and reshape their lives, imagining what could have or should have happened, and reviewing what actually did happen

Thus stories have interrelated social and evaluative functions The stories we tell help define our socio-cultural landscape in particular ways and demonstrate connections between language, culture, and power .

Instill the love of storytelling

Storytelling is a great skill to teach to kids. It helps to improve their language skills, instills a love of reading and stirs their imagination. Here are seven ways to teach your kids how to tell stories.

Research suggests that the fear of speaking in public is the second greatest fear that adults have. Getting kids comfortable with speaking in front of audiences at an early age is just one benefit of teaching kids how to tell stories, says Christine French Cully, editor-in-chief of Highlights. Other benefits of teaching children the art of storytelling include building their confidence, improving their writing skills and instilling a love of reading, she says.

Here are seven ways you can teach your kids the art of storytelling.

1
Expose them to good storytelling
Local libraries often bring in storytellers.

"Many professional storytellers make and sell recordings, and they often appear at festivals and other cultural events," Cully says. "Some areas also offer classes."

2
Let them choose their story
Expose kids to a great number of short books and magazine short stories, and let them choose to learn to tell the one they love the most, Cully says.

"They won't give it their all if they don't really get a kick out of the story," she says.

If you're going to have children memorize the text, Cully suggests that you look for stories that don't rely on illustrations to fill in the gaps.

"Stories that are cumulative or include a repetitive refrain, which invites audience participation, work well," she says. "The stories should also be complete — with a beginning, middle and end — and they should make the audience laugh, cry or feel fear or sadness."

3
Have fun with "string-a-long stories"
Practicing telling stories in any form is helpful, and the more fun you have while practicing, the more effective it will likely be for learning. So says Dr. Alice Wilder, chief content officer for Speakaboos. One fun activity is telling a string-a-long story, which can be done with any number of people.

"The story starter can be, 'Once upon a time...,' but just be sure that the person whose turn it is to tell the next part of the story says something that connects to the line before," Wilder says. "Telling string-a-long stories, like Mad Libs, helps you understand various parts of stories and makes you use your imagination and think about what might come next."

4
Be expressive
Help kids see the need to throw their whole body into storytelling.

"Good storytelling uses body language, expression in their voices, varying volume — yes, they have permission to be loud — a sense of pacing and eye contact with their listeners," Cully says. "Some teachers I know have their children practice staring into one another's eyes to get comfortable making eye contact."

5
Try wordless books
A blank piece of paper can be intimidating, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

"The value of a wordless picture book is that it provides a setting, characters and some visual cues to inspire the imagination," Wilder says.

6
Practice, practice, practice
Children will become more comfortable with storytelling by practicing in front of a mirror or videotaping themselves telling their stories.

"Practice in front of a few other kids or family is helpful, too, particularly if the audience can be coached to give gentle, constructive feedback," Cully says.

Practice makes memorization of the story easier, too, she says.

"But practice doesn't always make perfect, and that's OK," she says.

Remember, this is supposed to be fun, so Cully says you should reassure the children that if they forget a part or get a little tongue-tied, it's all right.

7
Take a class
Check your local community to see whether acting, writing or illustration classes are available for kids. Many municipalities, libraries and art-education groups will offer classes that not only teach kids about how to tell an interesting story but also help them step out of their comfort zone to expand their imagination.

Story telling is an art that has mental, social and educational benefits on children. People of all ages love stories. Children are great fans of stories and love to listen to them. Storytelling literally means reading out stories to them or just telling a story from the memory to them. It is becoming a lost art today as many parents find very little time to spend with kids as the hustle and bustle of life demands them to reserve more time for the needs of life.

But any parent can preserve few stories for kids and spend a bit of time for them to tell them stories. Most of the parents ignore the importance of storytelling and are unaware of the advantages of storytelling. Let us see what all ways storytelling helps kids to learn and grow.


Children are born into a media-soaked environment today. They have numerous television channels and entertainment programs to get them engaged with entertainment. Parents switch on cartoon channels and keep children before them for hours. But, many a times they forget the disadvantages, such fast-paced visual media bring onto kids. Television cartons and other entertainment programs block the mental development of kids to greater extends.

All the television programs are designed for elder people, not for kids. Children may lose thinking capacities and analyzing powers if they are exposed to television, several hours a day. Children are slow to grasp and slow to think; thus they need entertainments specially designed for them. Storytelling is an activity that can transfer emotions and feelings and also can boost thinking capacity.


Storytelling is a great activity of learning. At each phase of the development of the story, kids ask questions. A proper teller can use tricks to make them curios and encourage them to ask questions. Storytelling is the basic training for academic learning. When they see images in the book and listen to the stories, kids learn to associate between images and story and later imagination and visuals.

You can increase the memory capacity of children by asking them to remember the stories you have already read for them or asking them to remember where you stopped the previous day. Always demand kids to share their contribution in the stories. Ask them to narrate a possible climax or encourage them to create a new story with the same characters in a story. Imagination is the key to creativity and children can be trained in many ways to develop stronger skills of imagination.

The most bulging benefit of storytelling is increased knowledge in children. They get to know about various places, practices in life, relationships etc., through stories. Most of the stories depict good and bad characters. Listening to stories will help children to have an idea of accepted style of behaviors and must to avoid acts. Stories also allow children to know about their own cultural roots.

Differences between cultures and various lifestyles are introduced to kids through stories. All the stories are informative to children, as being new to the world; they may know very little things about the life in the world. Stories help kids to visualize the plot and characters. Television programs block the imagination power of viewers, but stories are great help in boosting creativity.


Another advantage of listening to stories is that children grow in academic learning. Story telling introduces lot of new vocabulary to children. At homes, people communicate with limited number of words. But stories will have academic level vocabulary and lot of newer words for the kid to learn. It is easy to teach the meanings of the words as kids learn faster from the context of story.

Infancy is the period when children absorb most of the words they use in the future. Story telling also encourages children to participate actively in the learning process. It can enhance the listening skills of children. Kids love to talk instead of listening to a more detnything. But this is not acceptable in the classrooms, thus storytelling gives them with the necessary training to listen and understand instead of talking.

Parents need to take care of certain aspects when reading out stories for children. If you want kids to listen actively and understand the story, you have to read out the stories emotionally. Change the pitch of sound according to the feelings and emotions depicted in the story. Use effective body language to convey ideas in the exact way. Perfect storytelling is acting out a story. Storytelling parents are found to have more emotional bond with the children. It teaches the children to be creative and make them dynamic thoughts and action.

Please write to Mrs Sangeeta Gupta to find out more about story telling - training and workshop for kids, teenagers and parents.

INTRODUCTION

Everyone loves a good story – especially the young people we teach. In fact, being able to tell a story in an interesting and compelling way is an important teaching skill. This is because a good story is not only entertaining but is capable of holding student attention while they learn important concepts, attitudes and skills.

In her book, Earthtales: Storytelling in Times of Change, Alida Gersie (1992) notes that storytelling relates to current concerns about our future because most stories focus on the Earth, how it was created, and the problems that can arise when we forget the importance of living in harmony with it and each other.

Storytelling is currently experiencing a considerable revival of interest. This has led many educators to think about ways in which storytelling can be used to explore important shared themes and visions. The current concern about environmental issues is connected with this revival, since folktales about the relationship between the Earth and its human inhabitants have been at the heart of storytelling since earliest times. Not only do such stories offer a source of inspiration, they also contain a potential for understanding the many ways in which we value and devalue our beautiful green and blue planet. Stories provide us with practical insight into approaches to our most persistent environmental difficulties.
Source: Adapted from Gersie, A. (1992) Earthtales: Storytelling in Times of Change, Green Print, London, p. 1.

Power of story telling

Listening to a story – Listening skills; types of listening; expressing the story in different ways
Essential elements of a story – Understanding the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How aspect
Telling your personal story – Starting to tell your own stories, both personal stories and work stories
Structuring your story – Learning the design of a good story; Using story improve to initiate into storytelling
Type of stories – Learning different types of stories e.g. personal, vision, values, project
Technique of storytelling – Understanding the importance of voice modulation, gestures and emotions
Presenting your story – Telling your own / project stories to the group

We are conducting high quality Story telling workshop and training in Mumbai for kids and teenagers to make them effective communicator and build their self confidence suitable to all kids from age 4 to 18 years. For details and inquiry please write to Mrs.Sangeeta Gupta.