For Educators

Once upon a time, we taught by taught by tales. Teachers are natural storytellers!

Here are ways to turn tales into teaching moments with your class. (Presented at the New York Teachers of Reading Association annual conference in Saratoga November 2007.)

Stories, Skits & the Standards

How to tell a tale in class and teach your class to tell tales… Based on my presentation at the NYS Reading Association Conference, Saratoga 2007.

How to Find Your “Storyteller’s Voice”

  • Yawn! While driving to school, open your vocal chords! Yawn with a smooth round sound. Feel the hum or buzz in your chest. Loosen up with a song or a tongue twister. Say “Unique New York” 5 times. Try, “Lemon Limericks” “Toy boat” I dare you to try this one! “One smart fellow he felt smart. Two smart fellows, they both felt smart. Three smart fellows, they all felt smart!”
  • Say “Once Upon a time, I (your name) lived happily ever after!” with accent on a different word, five times. Pick a word, and add a gesture. Share with a partner.
  • Vary Your Voice - Raise and lower your voice saying once upon a time... Add emotions! Happy, Silly, Sad, Angry, Bored, Evil, Bratty, Bossy “Good Side/Bad Side Game”
  • Story Time Starters - Before go to read aloud or tell a tale, you may yell. “Sit down! Shut up! It’s story time!’ Let’s go or else we’ll do “no Child Left Behind” test prep!! Try instead....
  • Ringing a Story Bell. Putting up a story flag. Bring our the Story Box or Hat. Simply reach up and catch a story. “Hide” the tale in your hand, until they catch on.
  • Preset something in the box, bag, or hat symbolic of the story you will share. ‘Here’s straw from a little pig’s house!’ ‘Here’s one of Washington’s wooden teeth!’

Story Telling Essentials

  • Picture your tale, beginning, middle and end. See the end as a engine on a train. The plot, as the cars, one event following the next. Make a story board. Hold a little surprise ending, as your tale destination.
  • Prepare - Picture - Posture - Project - Pause - Pray - Imagine
  • Vary your pitch, speaking speed, using those commas and periods to pause. There’s never a mistake in storytelling when you can always say, by the way, I didn’t tell you the part about.... If there are any interruptions, “hold” the story in your hand till it passes.

Story Games - Try these to ease into telling a tale.

  • Dramatic Readaloud - Practice your reading. Breath at commas. Look at your kids on the periods. Lift or lower your voice for each character. Invite Students to help
  • Forgotten Fractured Fables - Pretend you can’t remember a short fable or fairy tale. Ask your students to raise their hand to help when you make a “mistake”. Once upon a time a sleepy rabbit challenge a speedy turtle to a hot dog eating contest.No!What then? Turn & Talk - Stop a story. Ask students to turn and talk to a neighbor discussing what they think will happen next. Share. Continue or change the tale.
  • When I Was in School ... Shocking news class, I was a kid too! Tell a Personal Tale -

Story Reviews of Tales Heard

  • Dee Jonge Heer’s - A place name tale, of “the city of gracious living.”
    Activity - What does your hometown’s name mean?
  • The Stonecutter - Sun-cloud wind mountain stonecutter! See Bill Gordh’s 15 Easy Folktale Fingerplays, Scholastic, 1997 and The Stonecutter - by Gerald McDermont Viking , 1975
    Activity - Replace the Stonecutter with another occupation and retell.
  • A Japanese circle tale - showing who is really mighty, and what happens when we wish.
    Tailor’s Tale - A circle story showing there is always something to turn into a tale.
    Activity: Retell the tale with class using only mime.

Imagination Starters

  • Pass & Tell - a tale of an object --- One Word Story Volley --- Round Robins ---
  • Tall Tale - My teacher gives so much homework, I ----
  • Three Gibberish Pigs
  • “Poemcrazy” - juxtapose an animal, a color, an emotion, an object, make a tale or poem based on a wonderful book by Susan G. Wooldridge

Activities to Follow a Story

  • Imaginative Journey to gather sensory words, and the feel of a historic place. Preset in your mind five things (senses) for students to discover while you “journey” them back.
  • Retell - Reenact - Enlisting children’s help in retelling favorite parts. Ask them to show us what face or voice a character had at a key moment. Act out favorite parts.
  • Draw & Write - Draw three or more pictures of favorite parts of the story. Ask students to write a describing sentence about their pictures, to lead to book making.
  • New Endings, New Settings - Change the ending or setting Show in a picture, writing
  • Story Maps - Draw a series of pictures showing the tale’s events along a road or in a circle. Add map key.

Brief Bibliography

  • Storytelling Activities
    Norma Livo & Sandra Rietz Libraries Unlimited
  • Body Boots & Britches
    Harold Thompson 1939, 1979
  • In The Path of War - Children of the American Revolution
    Edited by Jeanne Winston Adler 1998 Simon & Schuster

PRIMARY SOURCE QUOTES for Story and Skit Making (especially)

  • In mime, or without words please act out. “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!” “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin chin!” Choose your own folk tale chant.
  • Your little brother, sister or cousin has just poured milk into a bowl of your favorite cereal. There’s now none left. Show us what happens and how does it get settled?
  • Yankee Doodle Went to Town. Riding on a Pony. Stuck a feather in his hat, and called it macaroni! Written on the banks of the Hudson, by a British officer to tease American soldiers. Take sides and turn this into a skit. Use this information. “Yankee” means John Stinky Cheese. “Doodle” means dead head. Macaroni is a fancy style of clothes. Only children ride ponies. How will it all end?
  • In 1872 Susan B. Anthony voted for Horace Greeley for President. It was against the law then for woman to vote! Greeley was for “impartial suffrage” or the right for woman to vote. Susan was arrested! The judge said she’d be fined $100. (about $1000. in today’s money) When fined she refused to pay saying "May it please your honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty." In your ski, have three reasons why the judge fines Susan. What does Susan say back? How will you end this fight?
  • When people in 1807 first spotted Robert Fulton’s steamboat chuging up the hudson river, they were frightened. Sloop skippers hid under their sails. A Fishkill farmer cried. “The Devil’s driving a sawmill!” A woman screamed “A monster’s moving on the waters, defying the winds and tide!” Make this a skit.
  • Read this quote a few times. It’s from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

    The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. ... authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

    Discuss what it means. Pretend you are have to warn a new person in Sleepy Hollow about ghosts. And the Hessain shows up! What happens?