Tell Tales.
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
Photo by : umjanedoan
I like telling tales! No its not what you think. I’m not a snitch or grass. I like telling stories. If you haven’t explored this fantastic way of teaching then you better because you are missing out on one of the best teaching techniques ever. Mankind has been telling stories for as long as. History is literally his story.
In therapy, stories and metaphor are fantastic ways to help people to address problems and more importantly solutions without the therapist saying anything directly to the client like this what you should do to solve your problem. In the story, we are talking about someone else. You get it!
In school we can also use this approach to teach while not directly talking about the subject by telling interesting stories. Any story that includes blood, guts, and death preferably with a moral or punchline at the end makes a great teaching strategy. Some of my classes actually beg for a story. They love it and don’t even realise your doing the teaching and they are doing the learning while listening. Its what I call an indirect teaching method. For more innovative teaching techniques check out my NLP in teaching page.
Once you practice you can weave loads of content from the curriculum directly into your stories. For example, If I was doing a lesson about the lungs I might tell astory about my friend who developed emphysema. I tell them about how my friend had been smoking loads and started to have problems breathing. I go on to describe how she ended up in a wheel chair with tubes pumping pure oxygen up her nose. I describe how the effort of getting up gave my friend panic attacks. I include how I felt when my friends husband called me when she passed away. In one story can cover: lung structure, lung disease, health, humanity, emotions,relationships and probably a whole lot more. Talk abot cross curricular. The kids will probably have some stories to tell you that are related to the subject of your story. Kids learnig from other kids. Great! I always show the other kids that I will listen to anyones story as it models good behaviour. I might say to the kids to listen to each others stories and respect each other by being quiet.
I draw diagrams on the board to help illustrate my stories and include different accents, mime, humor, pathos and a little acting to get my message across. I try to compete with tv and games consoles for the kids attention by putting on a little show which hopefully makes the lesson more interesting. It is fantastic when the class goes completely silent and you can drop your voice down low knowing that every kid is hanging onto every last word of the story. Some of the kids see a story as an opportunity not to be “working”. Storytelling teachers know better! By the way, if the kids are so cool that they think your a prat, who cares , as long as they remember the lesson. One boy in my lowest anbilty yr10 class said to me ” why do you keep telling us these stories? like youve had a million things happen in your life”. Before I could answer, another kid ( who was the most challenged but in my opinion could be a high flyer in the right envirnment) jumped to my defence and said ” because he wants to make it more interesting for us to learn”. This lad was permanently excluded shortly after for bad behaviour but talk about perseptive.
Please experiment with this. Look into your own past or fantastic stories that you have heard. You will not regret it. I have a story lined up for every part of my subject whatever the lesson.Why not you?
Photo by : Banalities
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