Hello teachers and welcome to this week's LessonStream Post.
Next weekend, I'll be attending IATEFL Slovenia. So please come and say hello if you are there.
The talk I will be giving is titled 'The teacher as a Storyteller' and it is one that I gave two weeks ago at a conference in Belgrade (hello Serbian teachers and thanks to everyone at MM publications!) Following my talk, I got speaking with a teacher who told me she could never tell a story in the classroom like me.
There is a problem here and I wonder if you can see it.
That teacher has only ever seen me tell stories on a stage. On the other hand, she has never seen me tell a story in the classroom.
So what is the difference?
The image of a storyteller
When you think of a storyteller, what sort of images come to mind?
Perhaps you think of a stage performer – a presenter or stand-up comedian, for example. Or maybe that fun uncle who takes over the room at family gatherings and entertains you all with funny stories about things he’s done and people he’s known.
What about storytelling in a teaching context? You might think of that charismatic young learners teacher who ’becomes’ the characters and captivates the students. Or the teller of tales from long ago and far away.
If you don’t identify with one of these images, you might conclude that you are not a storyteller. But if that is the conclusion you reach, then you are wrong.
Storytelling is a fundamental function of language. In everyday life, it belongs less on the stage and more in conversation. In this way, we are all storytellers.
It can help to see storytelling as either performance based or conversational. If that is the case, what sort of approach should a storytelling teacher take?
As a rule of thumb, the larger the audience, the more it becomes performance based. And the smaller the audience or group of students, the more conversational.
These days, most of the teaching I do is one-to-one. And although I tell a lot of stories during those sessions and encourage my students to do the same, the dynamic is remarkably different from the one you’ll experience if you see me give a talk at a conference.
So don’t be misled by the images – there are as many ways to tell a story as there are people on the planet. Storytelling is accessible to everyone; it’s in all of us; it’s part of what makes us human. And, importantly, we can all improve our classroom storytelling skills.
Biscuit Thief
This week's lesson plan makes use of a story that I love to tell and you will too. It's an urban legend that involves two strangers in a waiting room at a train station.
The lesson plan includes an accompanying podcast in which I guide you through the activity and show you how to tell the story to your own students.
Thank you for reading. See you next Sunday 🤗
Jamie
