Creative storytelling - 28.02.2018

 An act of kindness

The food we eat makes our bodies, the stories we hear make our minds.

This sentence made sense to me from the first time I heard it. Indeed, such as the food is important and necessary for a human to be able to live, stories are the reason of how we think and see the world. As Andrew Wright tells it in his text we are stories, stories are people and society because they carry different values, perceptions and behaviours through time that are transmitted to all of us. For this reason, teachers have an important role at school because they bring pupils to create their own inner story map (Wright A., 2017) through an internal and external experience which makes them understand the world in a personal way.

 

The experience in class 

As a teacher student I had the chance to experience one of David Heathfields creative way of telling a story. In our creative learning module we had to talk about an act of kindness (Heathfield D., 2010) we could remember in order to act it out in front of the class. First of all, we were told to read the text called The pigeon and the ant. The story is about a pigeon saving an ant from drowning in the water and that same ant saving the pigeon from a hunter in return for his act of kindness. Then, we were split into groups and had to think about a personal story where we had the chance to help someone. We finally decided to choose the story from Maria, one of our classmate, which was about a misunderstanding of the dentists bill which she couldn't pay and the dentist making her pay only half of it. Each of us had a role and I had to play the dentist. The next week we presented our story to the class by acting it out physically and verbally.


Didactical intentions

Working on storytelling with the pupils helps them to develop different skills and even more if it's done in a creative way. By doing this exercise, I first noticed that if you wanted to get the audience's attention and amuse it you must play with several points such as the eye contact, the gesture, the facial expressions, the intonation and the rythm with some repetitions. When the pupils listen to the teacher telling a story they also play an active role because they automatically re-create the story they're told. But if we want, as futur teachers, make our students be engaged in the story we absolutely have to learn how to use our body and language in order to transfer the events and wake up their imagination.

I really realized that storytelling is not only about telling a nice story but it includes a whole internal and external process and also a direct and indirect learning process. For me, using storytelling in class is an amusing and rich way of improving the language. Indeed, when the teacher tells a story the students are able to connect with the pronounciation, the sound and some other aspects of the language. In my studies context vocabulary is a central point which demands students to learn words by heart in a monotonous and repetitive way. In this case, wouldn't it be more helpful and playful to hear stories and learn new vocabulary that is contextualized and so better to remember in a long term period ? I really think that it is our job to adapt to the children's natural learning development which means that with primary kids we have to be able to catch their attention and increase their interest by making words come to life in order to let flow their imagination and activate other skills such as critical thinking, in other words anticipation and hypothesis of what could happen in the story.
If using storytelling in a foreign language class, the teacher represents the ideal language learning model. By telling them stories, the teacher shows the students that it is possible to acquire another language and be able to speak it fluently. Indeed, pupils can aspire to speak english as well as the teacher one day. In the same idea, they get confident in expressing themselves.


Conclusion

This lesson was very useful for me because, according to my country, I am used to see teachers that sit in front of the pupils and tell a story, maybe in a good way, but without letting them the time to reflect on it or appropriate it by expressing themselves in different creative ways. Language classes are an opportunity to create a nice group environment where pupils build confidence and dare telling about their personal experience and own life. As a future teacher I really would like to use different creative ways of telling stories with the pupils, especially to develop their confidence and make them feel able to take part in a social conversation but also to share stories to others by making themselves understand. To finish this article, I would also like to add that this exercise does not only develop language skills but also social skills like collaboration, cooperation and empathy. Indeed, a group work is also about trying to understand others thoughts and discuss together to build a project in a harmonious way. A part from being one of the 21st Century skills, it is for me one of the most important key for a healthy learning community where everyone respects each other and accepts differencies in an intercultural context.

Video extract from another group