Michaela's ISCI 600 Storytelling Blog

For this blog post, I wanted to jump back to a module from earlier in the semester. In week eight, we focused on the audience as the storyteller. This topic caught my attention, immediately! As a second-grade teacher, teaching students how to tell stories is a part of what I do. I teach them to write, communicate, and listen every day. Unfortunately, it seems as if many children struggle with these skills, along with many literacy skills. I was very interested in this topic because I wanted to learn insight on how I can help my students build on these skills through storytelling. In 1996, Susan Danoff had the goal for “…storytelling to teach literacy skills and motivate students who were not being served by more conventional teaching methods” (Greene & Negro, p.198). After reading more about Danoff, and her pursuits, it is clear that she has had a heavy influence on the ways storytelling can affect children. Through her work, it was determined that interactive techniques, such as...

For my fifth storytelling experience, I decided to bring it back to the basics and read a children’s book to my class of second graders. I wanted to take what I have learned so far in this class and see how much I had grown since the first storytelling experience. I also wanted to determine anything I needed to continue working on as I progress into my career as a librarian. One thing I knew I wanted to focus on, going into this experience, is my introduction. Through every storytelling experience, I have always felt that my introductions could be stronger. So, this was my focus for this story. The story I decided to read to my students is called Regina Is Not A Little Dinosaur by Andrea Zuill. It is a fun tale of a small dinosaur who wants to do everything the big dinosaurs do. She believes she is big, strong, intimidating, and capable of hunting all on her own; even though her mother tells her to stay in the nest. On her hunt, she encounters some much larger dinosaurs and character...

  Digital Storytelling This week, we read and studied digital storytelling. Stories can be told in many ways, and with the movement of time, digital storytelling is very relevant. As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to further engage students and make learning relatable for them. I could not wait to learn about digital storytelling and how I could use it as a tool in the classroom. There are so many resources out there for digital storytelling, and this post has the intention of focusing on what it is, why it is important, and how it can be a tool for educators. First, what is digital storytelling? Digital Storytelling is to tell stories with the use of computer-based tools/multimedia, such as graphics, audio, visual, and web publishing. It is very similar to traditional storytelling as it has a specific focus. This focus can be any topic! Digital tools can be used to tell all types of stories. Although you may think that digital storytelling is a new technique to keep...

  I chose The Storytelling Loop as the blog I am sharing this week. This blog is very interesting and caught my attention almost instantly! The blog is run by two people, Silke Rose West, and Jospeh Sarosy. Silke has over thirty years of experience in teaching kindergarten She helped create the first “forest kindergarten” and helps parents, teachers, and schools learn how to be better storytellers. Joseph wrote for “Fatherly”, a parenting blog, where he won awards for his articles. He has been writing The Storytelling Loop, which has reached over 70,000 people! I also love that at the bottom of their “about” page, it says that they “…live in Taos, New Mexico, where storytelling is a part of every day!” Their blog claims to share tips, research, and examples of how to make connections with storytelling. With this information being read, I knew I had to dive into this blog, and I found some amazing things! The first blog post I found to be interesting is called The Storytelling Tre...

Story telling is not just for children. This is a phrase that can cause many to object. However, I, and many others, believe stories continue to play a huge role throughout people’s lives. Teenagers, or young adults, especially question the appropriateness of storytelling as an activity for them. What they do not realize, however, is that storytelling develops skills that are essential to personal growth. (Greene & Negro, 2010). Many genres of literature can help young adults navigate through the challenge that is growing into adulthood, “These tales give the adolescent courage to explore his or her inner space- dreams, images, and feelings- and, through imagination, to construct a self” (Greene & Negro, 2010, p. 175). Literature and stories can be a doorway and outlet into finding oneself. Unlike young children, skepticism can be expected from young adults when it comes to storytelling. The selection of books for this age group is most important to consider. It is important ...

  Storytelling Experience #1: Telling A Story With A Book Throughout my whole life, I have been a reader. Reading stories has always been special to me. I loved the exciting feeling that reading gave me. It provided a moment to pause the business around me and escape to a place of magic and adventure. I owe most of these opportunities to my mother, who has been a school librarian my whole life. She had the belief that reading literature to children is beneficial in building the foundation for a life-long love for reading. Reading to children can build the foundation for strength in reading comprehension, vocabulary, language, imagination, communication and more! Storytelling uses language to develop all these critical skills in young students (Cherry-Cruz, 2001). Because of my mother’s beliefs and actions, I was able to become strong in all these skills and excel in my reading journey. These beliefs have been instilled in me! Like my mother, I want to encourage young students to ...