Storytelling as means to gain attention and support learning
Some people think we're made of flesh and blood and bone. Scientists say we’re made of atoms. But I think we're made of stories! When we die, that's what people remember, the stories of our lives and the stories we told.
Ruth Stotter
Let’s do a small exercise: imagine that 10 years from now, a student comes to you and tells you that they still remember a story you told them in class. Be it maths, history, biology, physics, logics, literature, whatever you teach. For sure you know plenty of stories.
You might ask yourself why we want to tackle this topic here and what is its importance for online teaching. Well, it is as important for physical lessons, as for online lessons. But online, the attention span drops dramatically. So we want to give you a few tools to increase students’ attention span as much as possible.
Not to mention that, through storytelling, even you will be more inspired and content about how the lesson went. So… let’s dig deeper into a few storytelling elements!
Storytelling, when done interestingly, can become an effective teaching strategy. It’s a tactic to stay connected and to reach out to people, especially to young students who are quite diverse and with a big span of interests.
As teachhub.com(8) suggests, storytelling can be used to:
- introduce a new topic (search the internet for a related story, or even make a script and encourage students to act it out);
- attract unmotivated learners (can you find a way in which they can randomly be given a hint, like a story cube, and get them engaged in creating a story?);
- illustrate a concept (use digital storytelling - videos, photos, apps…) e.g. “Show students a sequence of pictures or illustrations depicting a specific concept and have them transcribe the story”;
- enhance any subject (create ways to bring historical figures to life, or give opportunity to students to create their own real-life maths problems).
Reflection time
Think about 3 moments when you can introduce storytelling in your next lessons and come up with an idea of a story for each of those moments. The more diverse, the better.
Michael Buschmohle, a specialist in public speaking, says that all good stories have these parts (and if you want to know more about the classic storytelling outline, read about the Hero’s Journey):
You can start the story with the beginning, the middle, or the end. Daniel Nayeri says that “a story begins when the trouble starts” and you will find the beginning if you answer to that question: “What does my character want? Usually when a character wants something bad enough, they get up and go on a journey to get it. Or they start making decisions they otherwise wouldn't.”
The ancient Roman Horace recommended telling the stories starting from the middle, so you can jump straight into the action and fill out the details as you go. Remembering the past, and telling about it, can inform the current trouble, and it can cause all sorts of new conflicts.
For sure, what students will be intrigued by is the conflict, which could be something like this:
Knowing what your character wants, what is their motivation, is crucial to telling a story. Motivations are the reasons characters do things, and students can relate to that motivation - what does the character want most? You can also insert an internal conflict of the character (for example, between conflicting values, or between what they want and what they should do) - this will make the character seem real.
A good plot would mean to start with a conflict faced by a character, develop the character’s motivation and build toward a climax. The climax, basically, answers the question: Will the character get what they want?
The journey ends with the change of the character - they got what they wanted and the lesson is learned.
Reflection exercise
Read the article in the link below and note the elements of a successful story(9)
https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/30-storytelling-tips-for-educators/