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Narrative is hard-wired into us. We automatically “tune into” stories and flow with them, following along. Timeless, storytelling by your students can really make a difference and help them engage as well as acquire language. A good reader on this wider subject is Kiernan Egan’s Teaching As Story Telling.
But how do you do a storytelling lesson in class? Writing stories is one thing, telling them or retelling them is another.
Here are a few core storytelling activities that you can easily use in class to make this powerful approach happen.
Story Retelling. As the video outlines, provide students with simple stories to tell each other. Jokes work very well. Students tell their stories after reading them. Then switch groups, retell again. Each time, they’ll get better and better and look less at their paper while telling the story. See our Best Funny Stories.
Story Dominoes. Provide students with sets of pictures. Students take turns telling the story to connect the pictures into one narrative. After, retell and share your story with others. Who has the most creative, powerful story?
Fractured Fairy Tales. Read a favorite fairytale. Then, ask students to tell their own version based on the voice of one of the characters. See - The True Story Of The 3 Pigs.
Story Dice. Like Story Dominoes, use a set of dice with pictures or icons on them. Roll and then tell the story. Then keep telling the story … See our online story dice generator. Another option is getting students to make their own story dice and play with them!
Story Starters. Students in small groups get a story prompt. Example: “One day a man walked into a bank.” Continue around the group with each person in turn, adding one sentence to continue the story. After X time, signal students to end their story. After, can the students retell this story to the other groups?
Jokes. As in the first activity, jokes can be told and then retold. Give students a short joke to read and try to memorize. Then get them to retell it to others and get them to laugh. Then have others retell someone else’s joke and so on … can they do it?
Listen/Watch - Retell. Divide the class into two. Tell each group (or show a video), a different story. Then give students time to tell the story together in the group. Then, have them tell their story to the other group.
Storytelling is a very active and fun activity that helps students use language purposefully, and communicatively. Plus, it is fun to tell stories. It’s so natural to us humans.
Hopefully, these storytelling ideas will help you with your classes! See all our “story” related resources and videos.
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Storytelling In Class