The Art of Storytelling

Hello everyone, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Alberto and I’m a future bilingual primary teacher. As all of you can see in the description of the blog, I will write about a wide range of topics resources and techniques, or at least I will try, all of them related to the exciting world of children’s literature. The aim is to post useful materials and resources to give you ideas about how to work the literacy in class and at home following the CLIL approach.

To begin with, along these two weeks, I have seen different ways to work in class the Phonics using Yo-yo Phonics and Jolly Phonics. Which, in my opinion, it is very important for children to learn the sounds and the correct pronunciation since the early stages in order to create a good “previous knowledge base” that they will use all along their lives (hopefully). Moreover, we also explored The Nursery Rhymes as a way of work multiple things such as learn common structures and difficult vocabulary, and also how to use it in a cross curricular way.

However, I would like to focus this first post on the art of storytelling. I know that most of you are going to think “Why storytelling?” , the answer is very simple, because as the title of the post says it is an art, and also it is full of possibilities to work in class and at home. I highlight that “it is an art”, because I believe that it is not something that you can do without practice. In fact, if you want to perform effectively in a Primary class, you should work some aspects such as the facial expressivity, a specific tone of voice as well as a good repertoire of onomatopoeic sounds. Apart of that, the storytelling must be active, dynamic, interesting, and purposeful in order to create an empathy with the children that are going to watch it.

Here we have a perfect example of a well-known poet and storyteller. He is Michael Rosen and as far as I’m concerned, he is amazing in his performance:

As you can appreciate, the storytelling is not only a performance to entertain your students; it is also an excellent way for the children to practice different linguistic aspects. In fact, you can use this resource to work in class a wide range of contents not necessarily only related to English language, but also related to science, mathematics and so on. Moreover, you can adapt the storytelling to the level of your student using different scaffolding techniques such as realia, puppets, using repetition, chunking the story into bits, etc.  Apart of that, It gives you the opportunity to involve the students in their learning process.

Practical Application: 

For instance, you can perform the story alone first, in order to be their model, and then you can foster some of the student to participate in it. In this way, you will be using a type of scaffolding called modeling and also you will attract their attention and create a good atmosphere in class. After that, you can encourage them to create their own story, in groups, and perform it in class. To do this you should provide some key vocabulary and structures in order to guide a bit the process depending on the level of your student. 

Finally and thank to this, the student will work in a cooperative way and they will learn unwittingly. Besides, as I said before, you can work with this resource in a cross curricular way.

I hope you enjoy this first post and see you in the next one.