The joys of storytelling!

Storytelling is experiencing a revival these days, from exposure on podcasts such as The Moth to the thousands of attendees at the National Storytelling Festival to local guilds and events, such as our own PowellsWood Storytelling Festival every July.

 

I bring one or two storytellers to campus every year to expose students to this wonderful art, and also engage students as active tellers through games and activities.

The National Storytelling Network's position paper on the importance of storytelling in education, says that "Storytelling helps students be active not only in presenting but also in focused listening and reacting, enhancing the vital skills of communication. Storytelling is an ancient art that strengthens and enhances skills that children need to acquire to function in today’s world." Of course, it is also a great deal of fun!

Fourth graders spent a couple of weeks playing storytelling games in pairs and circles. Finally they each learned and performed - in one class session - a Russian folktale from one of Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss' books. First they practiced telling the story to the wall, then to a partner (see above). Next, some volunteers shared their versions with the whole class. Check out these wonderful examples:

The Biggest Lie, version 1 

The Biggest Lie, version 2

What's going on in Kindergarten and 1st Grade?

Kindergarten and first graders have been enjoying our new unit on noodlehead stories! Noodlehead tales poke gentle fun at individuals - or sometimes entire villages, such as Chelm or Gotham - who behave in a silly manner.

In addition to providing a lot of good laughs, sharing these tales from around the world reinforces a bit of geography (we start every story with a look at the globe) and reminds students of some of the universalities of human culture. They are starting to notice commonalities between, for example, a noodlehead situation in a Goha story from the Middle East, a Cajun story from Louisiana and a story from England.

I am also combining reading books with storytelling - which of course is the way that stories were primarily transmitted from generation to generation long before the written word! Storytelling is enjoying something of a rebirth in popularity at the moment and I find that students respond eagerly to the immediacy and physicality of it.

If you'd like to enjoy more noodlehead stories at home, you can do a web search and find many sites that list them. Noodleheads: The Wisdom of Fools is a favorite of mine which lists many great books.

Fun with folktales

Each year from September to December, children in grades K-3 focus on a different part of the world and learn about it in-depth through hearing a variety of fiction, non-fiction and folktale stories written by or about people from that culture. In past years we have learned about West Africa, Japan, Scandinavia and Latin America.

This year our focus is Germany, which naturally makes the Brothers Grimm a major area of study! Folklore forms a significant part of the rich cultural heritage of every culture around the world, and it has been interesting for students to understand how these precious tales are passed down through generations, travel around the world with traders and adventurers - and sometimes end up on our bookshelves or movie screens!

If you would like to explore more folktales at home, check out:

• Grimms' Fairy Tales - a National Geographic site
• German Fairytale Route - information about the settings of many Grimm tales as well as a link to a page where you can read them online
• SurLaLune - a wonderful site with many basic European tales and their variations

Also, you can go to the public library and browse in the 398.2 section, where you will find many wonderful folktales from around the world to delight readers of all ages!

Got folktales?

Folktales are one of the most enduringly popular genres with children of all ages, including teens who devour young adult novels inspired by these classic stories.

It is no secret that many folktales fall into common types that are echoed in cultures throughout the world. In fact, Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne first classified many folktales by motif in 1910 and his system is still used today.

One way to find variants on a beloved folktale is to go to this website:

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/

Sur la Lune "features 49 annotated fairy tales, including their histories, similar tales across cultures, modern interpretations and over 1,500 illustrations."

More serious folktale fans should check out Margaret Read MacDonald's The Storyteller's Sourcebook, available at the public library, which indexes literally hundreds of picture books and story collections. This will open up a treasure trove of family reading!

It is a thrill (as well as an engaging topic for discussion and inspiration for one's own writing) to read a variation on a beloved story that has been passed down through the ages.