Integrating storytelling objectives in daily teaching
Integrating storytelling objectives in daily teaching Teaching
objectives of storytelling skills training in the
curriculumSuggested daily class activities
1. To help students feel at ease and minimize their stage fright
when speaking to others- confidence building
c) Story warmers relax, group dynamics, trust-building.
2. To encourage students to select appropriate aids to
supplement their self-expression
a)
Use puppets, any relevant objects, students own picture
book,
Story time hat, scarf to draw attention of audience
3. To help students to learn to visualize images when learning a
story
f)
Stick puppets to instruct change of voice of characters
Improvisations
Play narrator- dramatize story moments
Use TV episodes, comic books
4. To help students to empathize with others, and to show
emotion and mood with body language
g)
Role play before a full length mirror
A story of gesture- e.g. from a happy girl to an old woman who
is coughing, when you find something in a box and feel
surprised,..
5. To encourage students to have spontaneous oral production
with emphasis on coherence, and the mood of the story
b)
On the ball (Whoever gets a ball has to speak on a topic)
Continuous story (using Powerpoint, cue cards)
Impromptu stories/speech (e.g. If there is no sun tomorrow)
One-minute morning speech
Retelling: Change ideas, feelings, values of characters: a hero
into a heroine, foolish behaviour into brave behaviour; expanding
or reducing the story; combining 2 stories, improving the story-
change the sequence of events.(All these can be drawn from stories
in textbooks, or the short stories in Reading Workshops).
6. To encourage students to have self expression with emphasis
on the use of body language, manipulation of setting, to make a
lively and communicative presentation
h)
More drama skills practice
Play charades#
7. To encourage students to speak at a moderate pace, have clear
enunciation, and pay attention to the following phonetic features:
Consonant clusters, stress, linkage, single word and phrases
d)
Phonics workshop
Tongue twisters
Sound patterns practice
Retell a story with a change of words- original words into all
words with a particular consonant cluster, vowel..
Singing
8. A second target after pronunciationTo encourage students to
express other shades of meaning of a message through a change of
stress, and tones
e)
A game to contribute a sent to a story-Fortunately (rising to
show positive aspect), unfortunately (fall to show negative
aspect)
Games to elicit the use of question types (rise for questing for
information, fall for questing for agreement of the content; and
listing examples Do you want tea, coffee or Horlick? (rise>
rise> rise> fall) Yes/No questions and Wh- questions;
question tags.
(All these may be practice using dialogues at lower primary
level)
9. To develop students ability to pay attention to the coherence
in speech delivery and to be able to memorize chunks of utterance
effectively.
I)
Simon says (memory game)
Chinese Whispers (memory game)
Group picture story making
Add-a-line story making
3-part flow chart story, eight-box flow chart
Clothes line story making- clip some pictures on a clothes line
in the classroom. Ask groups to sequence them to make a story from
time to time.
Recount : students own experience-releasers e.g. a toy of mine,
a particular time when I was ill.
Ambiguous pictures- draw a stick person and a rectangle.
Students to guess what it is about, and what will happen next.
Teacher then draws the next bit of clues to encourage guessing.
CChu/LLSS/EMB/Sept 2006
