successful teaching methods

Unlocking Creativity: Teaching Storytelling in the Classroom

January 3, 2024 By dhcbaldwin Leave a Comment

“Unlocking Creativity: Teaching Storytelling in the Classroom” is not just a title, it’s an invitation to explore strategies that make teaching this timeless skill an enriching and transformative experience for both educators and students alike. Let’s dive into the art of storytelling and discover how it opens doors to boundless creativity within the classroom.

Did you know I have the secret to boosting student engagement? My new book, “We’re Live! Radio Theater #101” explains my journey to implementing this unique tool in the classroom. Check it out here

Understanding the Basics of Storytelling:

In my experience, I’ve found that students enjoy storytelling. In a theater class, it is much lesson threatening than performing a monologue. Consequently, I always include a storytelling unit in my yearly lesson plans. When you begin teaching storytelling to your students, first introduce the fundamental elements of a story. Although your students may be aware of these elements, sometimes a quick review of the key components is necessary. Reiterate stories which have characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution. Use examples from literature, movies, or real-life situations to illustrate these concepts. This makes the learning more relatable to your students. Or use storytelling as a warm up exercise for several days. Check out: Storytelling Postcard Stories in my TPT store, or my Payhip store.

Immersive Storytelling Activities for Early Finishers:

Engage your students in interactive activities that immerse them in the world of storytelling. One idea is to create a storytelling corner in your classroom. Your early finishers will appreciate this. Encourage them to collaborate on developing and sharing their stories. Again, a reminder of a story’s components could be useful, especially if students are working independently. Generally, students need your help in the fleshing out of the story–that is describing settings, characters, and emotions.

Essentially, you each them the five C’s, Circumstance, Curiosity, Characters, Conversations, and Conflicts that captivate audiences’ interest. The circumstance is all about establishing the scene. A storyteller must provide essential information to their audience including — when, where, and why.

In addition, after a teacher finishes teaching storytelling the culminating activity could be a storytelling day. If you’d like a one week lesson which teaches storytelling, check out this one at ( Teacherspayteachers.com ) or at my Payhip store).

Utilize Technology:

Embrace technology as a tool to enhance storytelling experiences. Platforms like digital storytelling apps, interactive whiteboards, or podcast creation tools can make the process more dynamic. Students can explore multimedia elements to enhance their narratives, including images, music, and sound effects. There are a plethora’s worth of apps. for storytelling whether your students are in lower elementary or high school. If you are looking for a site where your students can generate stories on line, check out Boomwriter, Nawal, Storybird.

Encourage Freewriting Sessions:

Foster a love for writing by incorporating freewriting sessions into your lessons. Set aside dedicated time for students to let their imaginations run wild without worrying about grammar or structure. This practice helps them discover their unique voice and allows creativity to flow freely. The Writing Process, expresses it, “ increases the flow of ideas and reduces the chance that you’ll accidentally censor a good idea. Additionally, it helps to increase fluency second-language learners—i.e., the ability to produce written language easily as opposed to accuracy.”

Showcase Diverse Stories:

Introduce a variety of stories from different cultures, genres, and perspectives. Exposing students to diverse narratives only helps to broaden their understanding of the world. Additionally, it inspires them to explore various storytelling styles. Teachers can encourage discussions about the cultural and emotional aspects of these stories. Plus, it is such fun! If you are ready to embark on reader’s theater or play production as vehicles for storytelling, check out my blog post, The Reasons Teaching Multiculturalism in the Classroom is Vitally Important

Have you introduced your students to Kamishibai storytelling? Check it out here

Incorporate Storytelling in Different Subjects

I strongly urge you to integrate storytelling into various subjects, not just drama class or language arts. Whether it’s creating historical narratives, science fiction stories, or math-related scenarios, connecting storytelling to different subjects makes learning more holistic and enjoyable. One of our biggest challenges in this great big world is understanding one another, especially our cultures. If you’d like to learn more about integrating drama into core classes, check out: How to Excite Students With Drama Integration

Peer Feedback and Collaboration:

I find it you foster a collaborative environment where students can share their stories with peers, reluctant students are less disinterested in your class. Implement peer feedback sessions, emphasizing constructive criticism and positive reinforcement. This not only improves storytelling skills but also enhances communication and teamwork. Here’s a way to incorporate Kamishibai storytelling in the elementary classroom: Storytelling| Student Created Pictures Unit for Upper Elementary.

Celebrate Student Achievements:

Another way to create opportunities for students is to showcase their storytelling prowess. Whether through class presentations, storytelling festivals, or publishing a class anthology, celebrating their achievements builds confidence and reinforces the value of storytelling. Pick up a FREE speech rubric here: Free Speech Communications Editable Persuasive Speech Rubric.

Guest Speakers and Storytelling Experts:

Invite storytellers, authors, or professionals to share their experiences with your students. Guest speakers can provide valuable insights, tips, and inspiration. Plus they can reinforce the idea that storytelling is a skill with real-world applications. If you pick up a copy of this storytelling unit, I included links to professional storytellers’ performances.

Assessment through Reflection:

Choosing what a teacher wants to focus on in storytelling is important. My advice is to focus on creativity, clarity, and emotional impact. Encourage your students to reflect on their own storytelling journey, identifying areas of growth and setting goals for improvement. This reflective process reinforces the learning experience and encourages a growth mindset.

In conclusion, teaching storytelling in the classroom is more than imparting a set of skills. It’s about nurturing creativity, empathy, and effective communication. By implementing these strategies, we empower our students to become confident storytellers. It equips with the tools they need to navigate the complexities of the world with imagination and resilience. I encourage you to embrace the power of storytelling, and watch your students’ narratives unfold into vibrant tapestries of expression and understanding.

Recently, my daughter asked me to record the story of the time I saw my father’s ghost walking in a hospital’s hallways. I was flattered that she remembered the story and wanted to share it with others. Do you think people would like to hear this story? It’s a true story.

How have you used storytelling in your classroom? I’d love to hear about it. You can contact me at DhcBaldwin@gmail.com.

Learn How to Teach Creative Dramatics in Your Lunch Hour

March 30, 2022 By dhcbaldwin Leave a Comment

Learn How to Teach Creative Dramatics in Your Lunch Hour!

I’m worried about our teachers and you should be too.

Recently, I read an article from http://www.nea.org that approximately fifty-five per cent of our teachers are seriously considering quitting teaching at the end of this year. That’s up from thirty-seven per cent last year. Yikes!

You can imagine the reasons they are considering leaving–exhaustion, demoralized, uninspired, understaff and underappreciated. Not to mention, the global pandemic! (That doesn’t even include underpaid which has been an ongoing problem for year and really a sad statement about the country, in my opinion.)

I can’t fix the schools, but I can help teachers.

Learn How to Teach Creative Dramatics in Your Lunch Hour!

Let’s say you and I are eating lunch together in the teacher’s lounge.

I say to you, “How’s the day going?”

“Terrible!” you say.

“What seems to be the problem” I ask.

“The students are not engaged. They are rowdy, disrespectful and negative.”

At this point, that I nod and say, “I can help you.”

You look at me with an expression of disbelief. “How, Deb? You can’t be in there with me.”

I answer, “No, but I can give you some drama integration ideas which will help. In fact, my masters in education is focused on creative arts learning.”

Turning, I dive into my files and pull out several lessons which I tailored specifically for the classroom.

You take one look at them and say, “But I’m not a creative dramatics teacher. I can’t do this.”

“Oh yes, you can. Using creative dramatics to teach your class is nothing more than making a few changes in your perspective and teaching methods. Let me show you how.”

We talk for a few minutes, you smile and say “Okay, I’ll try it!”

As we leave the lounge, we hug. I watch you walk down the hallway with a little spring in your step because you know how to turn your unhappy class into a happy one in an afternoon.

Note: This is an actual conversation I had with a teacher on IG in the last week. Her students were being impossible. I suggested she try doing a lot of physical movement with them and it worked!

The Benefits of Creative Dramatics in the Classroom

I found this wonderful website, The Gaiety School of Acting, which explains the benefits of creative dramatics:

“Of all the arts, drama involves the participant the most fully: intellectually, emotionally, physically, verbally, and socially. As players, children assume the roles of others, and they learn about becoming more sensitive to the problems and values of persons different from themselves. At the same time, they are learning to work cooperatively, for drama is a communal art; each person is necessary to the whole.”

When integrating creative dramatics, we are not concerned with what an audience receives from a performance but what the child does. In fact, it would be best if you and your students are the only people in your classroom when you integrate drama.

This is Easier than You Think

These five lessons will engage them right from the beginning. It’s all in the approach you take to presenting them. (I can help you here. I include a teacher’s script with most of my lessons.)

Warm-ups–warm-up exercises can be adapted to the subject you are teaching or you can use them as they are.
Creative Movement–students need a lot of physical exercise.
Storytelling–if you are teaching a particular book, use Kamishibai storytelling as a way to check your students’ understanding of the plot
Tableau–a frozen stage picture is a fantastic way to demonstrate a math problem, moment in history, show something in science such as a volcano and its stage before errupting, etc.
Readers’ Theater–this is a powerful teaching method which can be adapted for a particular lesson about social studies, science or a story in reading.

Learn How to Teach Creative Dramatics in Your Lunch Hour!

Want a FREE lesson you can use tomorrow? Click here: Creative Dramatics Lesson

Pick up a copy of this blog post at: FarrahHenleyEducation.

Do I need a lot of extra materials?

Most teachers probably have the materials they’d need to integrate drama in your classroom. But beware! Try to avoid being a purist about this–a scarf can work as a belt, a box can be a trunk or three students’ desk chairs can make a bridge. It’s all in how you look at it.

I suggest: construction paper, paper plates, glue, scissors, colored pencils, markers, aluminum foil, newspapers, masks (you can purchase them at S and S Art Supply )

Collect clothing such as hats, caps, scarves, capes, eye glasses, pillow cases, masks, etc. A large plastic bin can hold all of these pieces. A trip to a local thrift store will have a lot of these items for an inexpensive price.

How do I Assess my Students’ Learning?

Talk about outcome education! Using creative dramatics in your teaching gives you an opportunity to model for your students and them to demonstrate right back to you.

Here’s an example for you– your objective today is to teach Common Core Standard L4.1e “Form the use of prepositional phrases”.

Easy! Make up a bunch of cards with prepositional phrases on them with phrases such as “on the, over the, around the”. Hand out a card to each student to physically demonstrate the phrase.

Learn How to Teach Creative Dramatics in Your Lunch Hour

Maybe you are teaching Next Generation Science stanDard concerning gravitational force. Would it be so difficult as to have two students tell a story about gravitational force and how it affects us on earth? Maybe you’d give them particular facts to use in the story? This blog post might help too! How Do I Use Arts Integration in the Classroom?

As you can see, using drama integration in your class is a no brainer. Word to the wise–refrain from using it every day as it will lose its uniqueness. I know it takes many teaching methods to engage your students. This is just one method.

But it’s a good one. 😉

Want a free drama integration lesson? Check out: Hire Me for Your Classroom Tomorrow!

Have you used drama integration in the past? How did it go for you? Do you have any questions I can answer? Contact me at DhcBaldwin@gmail.com or check out my website at DeborahBaldwin.net

Energize Your Classroom with Laughter

August 11, 2017 By dhcbaldwin 1 Comment

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/laughter-learning-teens-tough-crowd-matt-bellace

Energize Your Classroom with Laughter. That’s an obvious one to me.

I was perusing various articles on the web and ran on to this one.

Oh my gosh! This is me all over. I use humor everyday to reach and engage my students. If everyone is laughing, they are relaxed and receptive to the material I am teaching. Plus, it’s so doggone fun!

Read on….

Laughter, Learning, and Why Teens Are Such a Tough Crowd

Laughter, risk, and novelty stimulate the teenage brain. Make these elements work for you by incorporating the strategies and rhythms of stand-up comedy into your teaching.

By Matt Bellace, PhD

October 21, 2016

The teen brain is like a novelty-seeking missile, disengaged one moment, but capable of intense focus and attention when a task becomes rewarding. I believe it was the late Rodney Dangerfield who said, “The audience is like a dog and jokes are like biscuits.” In over 20 years of speaking and performing stand-up comedy for students, I’ve learned that using humor, interactive demonstrations, and even awkward moments are the biscuits that help students sit up and want more.

In the limbic system of the brain, the most important structure for memory (hippocampus) is located near and connected to a structure that helps produce emotions (amygdala). This anatomical relationship ensures that emotionally charged experiences will be remembered better than neutral events. This is the neurological basis for bringing more emotions (hopefully positive ones) to the classroom. In today’s world of decreased attention spans and distracting smartphones, students need all the help they can get to increase retention of the important information you’re teaching them.

Engaging Teens With Humor

Here are some strategies for bringing humor, novelty, and engagement to classroom activities.

1. A Laugh A Day: You don’t have to be a stand-up comedian to bring one more laugh per day to your classroom. The key is starting with something that you think is funny, but that’s still relevant to the lesson. It could be a quick one-line joke, a bad pun, a funny video from YouTube, or a short story. If it bombs, poke fun at yourself for the attempt and try something else the next time. The best part is that it will spur your brain to look for humor in everyday life, and you’ll start feeling more creative.

2. Use Improv to Spin Classroom Disruptions: Have you ever been in the middle of making an important point and then there’s a loud noise and you’ve lost half the class? It’s frustrating. Well, you can’t stop the disruptions, but you can use improvisational comedy skills to get a laugh out of them. I love it when some weird noise or bell goes off during my program because it’s a real moment that we’ve all just experienced. Comedy comes from relatable events. The next time this happens, try working a comment about the noise into your point and see if you get a laugh. Express your pain over the interruption, and the audience will relate. Over time, you’ll train your mind (and the kids’ minds) to be more in the moment, and the endorphins produced by a good laugh will make getting back on track feel less like work.

3. Bring Students Up: Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University, showed in a series of studies that teenagers take more risks when they’re in the presence of their peers. When their brains were imaged during the risk-taking activities, they showed an increase in blood flow in the pleasure center, a collection of neurons that activates during rewarding activities. In his book Age of Opportunity, Steinberg writes that teens take risks because that’s how they learn.

You have a unique opportunity in the classroom. If you use interactive demonstrations that allow students to briefly take over the class, you can leverage this built-in risk-taking mechanism designed to foster learning. These interactives don’t have to be funny, but by nature they will create awkward moments, which can be hilarious.

In my assemblies, the goal is to never embarrass the students who volunteer, but rather to amplify what they’re saying or doing. That technique of reflective listening, with some embellishment, can produce laughter. In many cases, I’ll run into students years after they’ve seen my program. They’ve long forgotten my name and face, but once I describe the interactive part of my presentation to them, suddenly it all comes back. It really makes my day when they immediately recite the point I was trying to make. That is emotional learning at work!

4. Take a Comedy Workshop: I love watching and performing stand-up comedy, but using it in front of teenagers is the highest level of difficulty for getting laughs. If they sense that a joke is coming, you’re finished. In addition, their age limits their life experience, so not even the best mortgage joke will work on them. In my experience, teenagers respond well to brief anecdotes with jokes that they don’t see coming embedded in the story. It also helps when the story is about things they can relate to, like attachment issues (e.g. parents, sibling rivalries) or pop culture. If you’re interested, I highly recommend taking a comedy workshop (improv or stand-up) at a local comedy club. There are even courses online, but nothing beats performing for actual humans. Interacting with an audience will build your confidence for delivering a joke, and it can be a healthy outlet for you.

It’s Worth the Risk

If you choose to bring comedy into your classroom, you risk being vulnerable in front of your class. I believe it’s a risk worth taking, because the payoff will last long after the laughs are gone. Break a leg!

Unlocking Creativity: Teaching Storytelling in the Classroom

Understanding the Basics of Storytelling: