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48 Group Storytelling

Isabelle Ritz

Strategy Overview

Group Storytelling is where students orally tell a story. This can take place whole group but is best in a small group setting. The teacher will come up with a topic and have students start a think aloud about the elements of the story. Then children will tell the story bit by bit making sure to build off one another. This is a great activity that can be done quickly at the beginning of a literacy block. This activity is engaging for students, allows them to use their imagination, and take on different characters. Based on research, story telling increases engagement and is a “simple interactive game that allows students to actively participate in the learning and engages students in the learning activity…. Results show that students have high learning satisfaction in the interactive storytelling learning activity” (Weng et al., 2011).

Strategy in Action

The teacher should prompt students with a topic or one element of story to get students started. For example, a dragon, summer mystery, or holiday dilemma . Then students should start to brainstorm characters, the setting, the problem, and then the resolution. Students should build off one another either pretending to be a character or the narrator of the story. The teacher should prompt with “add more detail, how was the character feeling, or did the problem get resolved and how?” The activity should take no more than 10-15 minutes.

Related Resources

BethMooreSchool. (2014, April 6). A mini-crash-course on oral storytelling. TWO WRITING TEACHERS. https://twowritingteachers.org/2014/04/06/a-mini-crash-course-on-oral-storytelling/

References

Weng, J.-F., Kuo, H., & Tseng, S.-S. (2011, July 6). Interactive storytelling for elementary school nature science education. International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies. https://doi.org/10.1109/icalt.2011.104

 

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