Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Local Artists Utilize Storytelling in the Classroom


Stories can help students learn almost any subject. Local teaching artists Doyne Carson and Sheri Johnson are helping both students and teachers at Edgelea Elementary learn to use storytelling across the curriculum.

“The power of story helps children become active and better listeners who are able to recall the sequence of events, values, and historical or scientific information that was related in the story,” Doyne relates. “With story, listeners learn more efficiently. Their visualization and imagination skills are stimulated. When watching a storyteller, children learn to interpret various kinds of body and language communication; vocabularies grow and lessons come alive.”
Lafayette School Corporation and Purdue Convocations , as partners in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education program, work together to help teachers develop twenty-first century teaching techniques. The Kennedy Center encourages the use of local teaching artists who can be more available to coach and work with teachers.

Storytelling is one of the most flexible performing art forms. It can use almost any other type of performing art in its presentation or stand on its own. Helping teachers learn how to use storytelling techniques in the classroom can increase student interest in the topic being discussed. The teachers for each grade level K-4 at Edgelea Elementary chose a topic to explore through storytelling. Doyne and Sheri have developed a program of stories and created study materials to help teachers cover these topics.

Sheri Johnson taught fourth grade at Happy Hollow Elementary School in West Lafayette. Now retired, she is using all the skills she developed in the classroom to help other teachers understand how storytelling can spark a student’s imagination.

“Storytelling was a way for me to help students understand concepts in science, social studies and reading,” Sheri says. “Students began to see their own life as a story.”

On January 5th, Doyne Carson presented “Abe Lincoln’s Boyhood Friend” to the fourth grade. The hour-long performance told of Lincoln’s early years growing up in rural Kentucky and Indiana. It related some of the true incidences of his life and the many challenges of learning to be self-sufficient. The story pointed out many of the personality characteristics that helped Abraham Lincoln become a great man and a strong president. Teachers had study materials to follow up in the classroom including books, a crossword puzzle about facts presented in the performance, and a set of portraits and other artwork featuring Lincoln. Doyne works with many area schools helping students learn Indiana history through stories.

Grades K-2 teachers have chosen to concentrate on character tales, and Grade 3 has chosen tales relating to rocks, plants, and sound and light. Doyne and Sheri customize their tales to fit each grade level and Purdue Convocations is providing picture sets to correspond to the tales.

Laura Clavio, Assistant Director