By Word of Mouth:
A Storytelling Guide for the Classroom

by Jeff Gere, Beth-Ann Kozlovich, Daniel A. Kelin II

Dr. Lori Phillips, Director
Pacific Center for the Arts and
Humanities in Education

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Storytelling Tools for the Classroom

By Jeff Gere

Storytelling involves imagination and the use of language and gestures to create scenes in the mind of the listener. The following background information is for teachers. It will prepare them to use the step-by-step approach to teaching storytelling outlined in the second half of this article. The more teachers know about storytelling, the better they will be able to teach and model it for students.

The Muscles of Imagination: How a Story Works
I see the pictures in my mind. In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light.” Think of it. To speak the “word” there must have been a concept, an image. Begin there. See the pictures in your mind. Let your imagination create images.

I find the words to tell the pictures. You don’t want to memorize a written piece. Instead, read it to get the pictures, the sequences, the images, the DNA strand of the tale. The author probably doesn’t live in the Pacific on an island, doesn’t speak pidgin, and doesn’t know you. Authors do their best, but it is the teller who stands alone in front of an audience waiting to be taken on a journey, to be exchanged within the tale.

I tell it, tell it, tell it. Tellers should use their own natural speech patterns and ways of phrasing and painting with words, letting the words flow around the scenes. As with any new skill, storytelling becomes easier with practice. Like a well-traveled road, the more you tell the story, the better you know its geography. The people become familiar: the way they sound and move, the clothes they wear. The teller may also experiment with different ways of telling a story.

Behind my eyes where I dream, the words make pictures. When you dream, you see and hear without eyes and ears. Through visualization, the teller and the listener come together to create the scenes of the tale. An Olympic ski jumper once shared that every morning and evening he “practiced” his ski jumps by visualizing them. Scientists measured his body during these visualization exercises and found that his heart rate changed, his eyes dilated, and his muscles tightened. It was as if he actually did jump off a mountain in a ski jump.

What Is Storytelling?
Storytelling is the act of using language and gesture in colorful ways to create scenes in a sequence. Flexibility is key as new versions of the story may bubble up and surprise the teller. Storytellers may even find the story taking on a life that is coming out of the teller and not the author. The story then rings true for the teller and the listener. A storyteller’s cultural background and unique personal attitudes and experiences shine through in words and gestures. In storytelling, we affirm the unique character and voice of each teller as the story is brought to life by a living tongue and breath.

The magic of story time is that it exercises the powerful muscle of the imagination, which is the center of being human. Language is a shared system of sounds that represents objects and ideas. It is mankind’s singular achievement, one that separates man from other animals. Language is our most sophisticated ability. It lies at the root of culture and of our highest achievements. It is imperative, then, that we give children rich experiences with words and with the subtleties of inflection and gesture. When we listen to a story the heart rate really does change, the eyes dilate, the muscles contract, and in a safe way, we confront witches, overcome monsters, fall in love, and find our way out of dark forests. Storytelling uses the left brain’s functions (language, a story line, sequences of cause and effect) to speak the right brain’s language of symbolic, intuitive, imaginative truths. For example, the small bird sits on the shoulder of the boy lost in the woods and tells him how to go home. The left brain says, “I understand the words, but birds don’t speak.” The right brains says, “What did the boy say back to the bird?” It understands these impossible developments as facts. Thus, storytelling helps the brain to integrate its two sides into a whole, which promotes health and self-realization.

Many folk and fairy tales speak in a symbolic language that psychology is only now coming to understand. The stories can help prepare children for the challenges of life. We must confront neutering Medusa and witches who want to harm us and have faith that the little bird exists in the forest and that in the end, good triumphs over evil and evil is served a deserving punishment. These values permeate all world religions and dogma.

The Nuts and Bolts of Storytelling (Performance Art)
This approach to teaching storytelling in the classroom is built upon the “learn by doing” immersion method. Small steps build upon each other as students develop skills. The model aims to increase confidence through:

• group discussions,
• providing a context for personal experiences,
• risk taking in a safe environment,
• practice and coaching,
• personal growth as a storyteller.

• We all tell stories all the time. When someone asks you how your day went, that’s an invitation for a story. We allow the listener to participate in our lives by sharing interesting highlights of events we experience.
• The first is the worst. Storytelling is a skill that improves with practice. The scariest part is starting. How did you learn to swim? By drowning for a while. How did you learn to ride a bike? By falling many times. To tell a story well, you need to practice. The more you practice the better you get.
• The audience looking at you wants one thing: Take us away! The members of the audience are there to go on a story journey, and the storyteller is there to lead them. Don’t be afraid, the audience wants to get lost in the tale!

My system – the Tell Well Storytelling System – is repeatable, teachable, and experiential. The sequence is as follows:

• The teacher briefly introduces the exercise and the concept of storytelling.
• The teacher tells or enacts a story to illustrate the points made in the introduction. It is a good idea to begin with personal tales before moving on to short stories such as Aesop’s fables. Teachers should select stories that are easily learned.
• The students do the exercises alone or in pairs as described below.
• The partners change throughout the process so that the stories constantly fall on fresh ears, and the teller gets several chances to hone his or her telling of the tale.

• “I live in an invisible box.”
• “It has a front, two sides, roof, and a back.”
• “It’s acceptable and dependable, and I feel comfortable in my box.”
• “But today in storytelling, I’m going to push the box to get bigger . . .”
• “. . . to stretch a little at the sides, the top, the front . . .”
• “. . . a little or a lot, it’s up to me.”
• “I’m going to try, today, to stretch my box of comfort.”

• Have you ever been badly hurt?
• Have you ever been scared?
• Have you ever laughed so hard that you fell out of your chair?
• How did you learn to swim?
• Did you ever play a practical joke? Have you ever had one played on you?
• Have you ever done something you are proud of, something heroic, something brave?
• Have you ever been to a dangerous area?
• What did you do when you were a kid? Where?
• Where did you hang out?
• When were you in a lot of trouble?
• Do you have stories about your brothers, sisters, weirdest relatives, or neighbors?
• Who are your best teachers, worst teachers, and best friends?
• Who do you think of when I say, “That person just drives me nuts!” Why?

• Select a story, read it, and memorize the sequence of events.
• Visualize the scenes: Who are the people in each scene? What do they look like? How do they talk, move, and stand?
• Imagine the action in the story.
• Use your imagination to add to the story if necessary.

• The teacher should model how to mime a story for students. Mime is awkward and difficult for most people, but it’s important. Bad storytelling is often static and word- based. Children respond to physical movement and it enlivens the tales. Mime forces the storyteller to start learning scenes and to visualize the story.
• Have students find a private spot. Students should close their eyes and begin to mime the story. Students should become the characters and wordlessly explore the different scenes.

Step 3 – Sound Effects

• The teacher should model adding sound effects to the mime. Make noises, but not words. Explore. Some effects are loud, some are silent. Model for students that life is a sequence of actions. Many times sounds can take the place of words as you do a movement.
• Encourage students to experiment with different sounds.

• Without giving up the physical movements and sound effects, add words to the story. Model this step for the students.
• Have students pair up. Students should tell their stories with mime, sound effects, and words. The listener will give the storyteller feedback.
• The teacher should monitor students to ensure that they are focused on the task. Praise them for their focus.

• The teacher should model asking questions to clarify the basics such as who was doing what and where.
• The listener needs to ask questions about or retell the parts that are difficult to visualize. If the listener isn’t able to see who is speaking or what’s going on, the story is not succeeding.
• Have students tell the story again with a different partner.
• Teacher feedback helps when students are having difficulties with this step.

Step 6 – Character Voices, Faces, and Placement

• The teacher should model keeping the characters clear in space and in relation to one another. This is a dramatic device to keep the audience informed, and it eliminates the need to say things like “then the bear said . . .” The audience can see that it’s the bear speaking. The teacher should also model voice inflections and facial and body gestures.
• Example: A bear is big and slow, and his face sags. The bear speaks slowly with a deep voice looking down on a boy to his right. The boy is small, has big eyes, and is afraid but gutsy. He has a high voice and speaks looking up at the bear to his left. (Have fun with this step.)

Step 7 – Eye Contact

• Practice using the eyes to hook the audience into the story. Storytellers talk directly to the audience. When they use eye contact, the audience feels their energy.

Step 8 – Five Senses

• Teachers need to model this challenging step. Good storytellers paint a picture with words – keep it short and colorful, as there is generally only enough time to give essential, provocative details.
• Challenge students to include not just what is done and said, but how things look and feel, including colors, scents, textures, and tastes. They should try to use three to five sensory descriptions in their stories.

Step 9 – Surfing the Story

• The feel of the story must be appropriate to the energy of the tale and the teller. Consider a song. It has different speeds and feelings and an overall mood. A well told story is told like a song. Pacing, flow, the musical dynamics of fast and slow, loud and soft, big and small.
• Encourage students to not just tell the story, but to surf it! Play it! Sing it! Have fun telling it. Give the story life through you, the storyteller, and let it live in you.
  
  

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Storytelling 101: Helping Kids Tell Their Own Stories

By Beth-Ann Kozlovich

One of the greatest human universals is storytelling. Stories create a common bond linking past to present, present to future, and person to person, regardless of ethnic origin. Anthropological significance aside, storytelling is a compelling method of sharing experiences in order to make sense of our world right here and now. Stories build kinship, allow a glimpse into other people’s lives – and perhaps let us see ourselves in the story.

This section will help you begin telling stories in your classroom. By revealing something of yourself to your students, you can show your students that they too have stories worth telling.

So What’s a Story?
Good question. When asked, most kids will tell you a story is something they have read or a fable or fairy tale they’ve been told. They may tell you the plot to a movie they’ve seen. Chances are they won’t tell you a story from their own lives, simply because they don’t know that these qualify. Nor are they likely to sing you a song or show you a journal, a dance, a painting, or a cartoon, but they need to know all these too can be stories. For the purpose of this unit, storytelling will focus on family stories and personal histories, but feel free to explore as many story forms as you have time for.

Storytelling in any form is a natural way for students to build literacy skills. Learning how to tell a story by writing it down, talking about it, and learning to actively listen to someone else’s story – all these activities teach important language skills in meaningful contexts. But sharing stories from your life can be scary and requires a degree of comfort with your audience. This aspect of storytelling can be difficult for children.

You’re Not Scared, Are You?
If your answer is yes, then you know how your students might feel! Crafting a story from your life will not only increase your comfort level, it will show your students that they can feel fear and still succeed. And by modeling storytelling, you can help your students gain an important benefit: higher self-esteem.

How Do You Start?
Brainstorm. First write down some story ideas. Don’t get hung up on how good they are. Just brainstorm. Now put one idea or memory into a sentence. Decide if you want to tell a story in the first or third person and what impact that will have on the story.

Facts, Feelings, and Faces. Next, write down the sequence of facts. From there, add the details, descriptions, situations, time reference, colors. Finally, layer the feelings and emotions. Choose your words carefully. If appropriate, put in a few sound effects, vocalizations, facial expressions, and silences. As funny as you may feel about doing this, talk out loud while you are writing! Certain words just sound better than others do when they are spoken, and speaking out loud will also help you discover the “sticking points.”

Timing. Think about the timing of the story. Don’t be afraid to cut it up and rearrange it out of real time or chronological sequence if it sounds better that way. Consider repeating certain rhythmic phrases to help build suspense or create atmosphere, a technique that works especially well with younger audiences.

Practice. Once you have a story you like, continue to practice telling it out loud, preferably to an audience. Corral kids that belong to someone else and tell the story. If you’re really motivated, tape your performance either on video or audiotape, even if it makes you nervous. Telling a story is a performance, and you may feel better about performing in front of your class if you’ve had some experience with audience reaction. You’ll be surprised what you learn about your story, including where it engages and disengages your audience – and you, too. Feel free to make changes! Remember it’s okay if your final story is different from the one you originally set out to tell. Stories often take on a life all their own.

Tell the Tale. When you’ve written, practiced, dissected, and rearranged the story, made notes to yourself, perhaps viewed your performance on videotape or in the mirror, stand in front of your class, take a deep breath, smile, and just start talking. Trust yourself to know where you are going with the story, and give yourself permission to change the timing, rhythm, sounds, facial expressions, and even a few words if necessary.

• Have each student pick a unique event that he or she has experienced.
• Students then write descriptions of their adventures in story form.
• Students illustrate the most important moment in their adventures.
• Students share their stories with the class.

Part 2. Collect an oral history from a relative.

• Have students select family members to interview. If at all possible, students should choose relatives that grew up in Hawaii or in the area where the school is located. If students do not have relatives they can interview, neighborhood friends are a good resource.
• Students interview relatives by asking for a description of an adventure or an event the relative witnessed or experienced during their youth.
• Students next write out the description of the adventure as if they actually lived through it.
• Encourage students to capture feelings and descriptions.
• Students should illustrate the main point of the adventure.
• Finally, students share their stories.

Part 3. Discuss the oral histories as a class.

• Identify similarities and differences between students’ personal experiences and those of their relatives.
• Collect the writings and illustrations and assemble a class book. The book can play a role in preserving an area’s unique history.

Storyknifing
Storyknifing is a style of storytelling unique to the Yup’ik people of Alaska. Storyknifing traditionally is done outside on the ground. As a story is being told, illustrations from the story are drawn in the moist dirt. A knife is used to smooth over the old illustration to make room for a new one. This is where the name “storyknifing” comes from.

For the Yup’ik, children’s stories and games help build knowledge about the environment and contribute to the physical and emotional strength necessary to life in a subsistence economy.

• Ask students to recall their favorite stories and what they like most about them. Have students work alone or in pairs.
• Have students practice telling their stories while at the same time storyknifing illustrations into the dirt or sand. Remind them to use the flat of the knife to erase what has been drawn. The motion is like spreading butter on bread.
• After students have had a chance to practice, form small groups of three or four. Students need to decide who will tell the first story. Remind the students about the rules.

Storyboarding
A storyboard is a visual script for a story, a series of images that simply and briefly illustrate the key events. Storyboarding is a technique used in television and the movie industry to enable filmmakers to envision how the story will be filmed.

Classroom Activity
Have students create a storyboard version of any story from a previous storytelling activity. Using blank story panels, have students draw highlights of the chosen story. Students will then use these illustrations to guide them as they retell the story. If story panels are not available, blank pieces of paper can be used, one sheet per scene. It’s a good idea to create a class storyboard before assigning students independent projects.

To create a class storyboard, follow these steps:

• Select a story known to all students.
• Remind students that they are to illustrate only the main scenes or key events and not every scene in the story.
• As a class, select four or five of the main events in the story to illustrate. Discuss and decide what each event would look like as an illustration. What details should the illustration include?
• Sketch each scene.
• Model retelling the story using the storyboard as a guide.
• If students are having difficulties, assign pairs or small groups to work together on a story.
• Display the storyboards in the library or hallways to encourage curiosity about the stories. This may encourage other students to read the stories themselves.

Biographies

Jeff Gere is a storyteller, educator, and producer. He lives on the island of Oahu, where he has been the drama specialist with the City and County of Honolulu Parks Department since 1987. Gere has extensive experience in storytelling and theater as well as in video projects. A master storyteller, he electrifies his audiences with his physical energy, wide range of voices, elastic face, and vivid characterizations. He has toured widely, and in 1992 represented Hawaii in the American Pavilion at the Universal Expo in Sevilla, Spain.

Beth-Ann Kozlovich has hosted Hawaii Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” since 1999. She is also the host, creator, and producer of “Town Square,” a live weekly call-in forum focusing on topical state, city, and cultural issues. Kozlovich was selected by Governor Cayetano in April 2001 to host the state’s first live Webcast, which covered the statewide teachers’ strike. Prior to joining Hawaii Public Radio, she served as the news director for the KUMU FM morning show.

Daniel A. Kelin II is the Director of Drama Education for the Honolulu Theatre for Youth (HTY). He also serves as a consulting director with Jodrikdrik Nan Jodrikdrik Ilo Ejmour, a youth organization in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). His work with Pacific island youth is profiled in Performing Democracy, published by the University of Michigan Press. The American Alliance for Theatre and Education named Kelin the 1995 Youth Theatre Director of the Year, and in 1999 he received an Aurand Harris Playwriting Fellowship from the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America.

This product was supported in part through a contract and various grants from the U.S. Department of Education (U.S. ED) and other federal agencies. The content does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. ED or any other agency of the U.S. government.