Monday 11 February 2013
Week 3 - The importance of Storytelling in Teaching (by Louise)
This week we saw that one of the best way to teach something, especially to children, is storytelling. In that purpose, we studied an essay by Melanie C. Green called "Storytelling in Teaching". This essay starts by a sentence which is, in my opinion, a perfect summary of what should be a storytelling in education : "Tell me a fact and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart
forever." - Indian Proverb
Indeed, a children learn more from a story than from a "classic" lesson for several reasons.
First, a story creates interest, it allows the child to dream and escape reality, by doing that he/she feels concerned.
A story can also create a special link between the reader (the teacher) and the listener (the student) and make the communication easier.
But to do all that, the story must have some basic ingredients :
- an heroic character with simple attributes, mostly cliché
- a basic scenario with some twists (but not too much)
- simple words and sentences with repetitions
- a happy ending
Knowing all that, it's now our turn to create a great story !
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You say that one of the basic ingredients that go in a story is "a heroic character with simple attributes, mostly cliché"..... why cliché?? Also, is it necessary for the character to be "cliché"?? What do you think?
ReplyDeleteBy "cliché" I mean with features which are immediatly recognizable for the child, for example a nice character looks good and wears flashy colors while a bad character is scary and wears black and dark colors.
ReplyDeleteI don't think a character has to be cliché. On the contrary if a character is a bit different from other characters, it can teach the children who are listening to the story to be more tolerant towards the others. By cliché, I think you meant physically,as you said,it must, or should "looks good" but in my opinion,we should teach them from their early age not to pay attention to the appearances. Appearances can hide lots of things. What's more, it is good to be different, so you have your own personality. This is my opinion. :) --- I really like Mesoke as she is though. (Emilie)
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