Cumbee_Destiny_Blog Share 2
This week I chose The Storytelling Loop blog to read and find out more information on storytelling. I found this boy interesting because of the time in which a lot of their blog post was listed. A lot of it took place during the middle of the pandemic and I knew it would be interesting to see their tank on storytelling during this time. The Storytelling Loop was created by Silke Rose West, a kindergarten teacher known for her storytelling and puppet shows, and Joseph Sarosy, a teacher and freelance writer who started the Storytelling Loop. This blog has been read by over 70,000 people worldwide. According to the blog, "The Storytelling Loop is a newsletter bringing you tips, science, and real-life examples of how storytelling builds the connection between parent and child." The name of the blog is based on a storytelling principle that Joseph uses to encourage parents to read to their children.
Video & Podcast Introduction to Storytelling - December 12, 2019
This was the first blog post that I looked at when exploring the storytelling loop blog. This video was a good introduction to what I would find later on in the blog as a whole. This was a digital story created by Joseph Sarosy in which he explains that storytelling focuses on the relationship that forms between the Storyteller and the listener. He broke this video down into three main sections. Those sections were Science of Storytelling, Simple Method for Parents, and Impact of Storytelling. He goes into greater detail in each of these sections to explain how storytelling can be used effectively.
In the first section, Science of Storytelling, Sarosy focuses on storytelling as a cognitive tool. He goes on to explain how storytelling is used to share information and something as simple as telling a story to Elementary students or as large as activist sharing their stories to politicians. He also goes on to explain how storytelling helps people retain more information and even states that people retain 600% more information when it's told in a story. This makes so much sense because there are so many details in the story that you can let onto whereas if you're just given plain information it's harder to remember. Finally, he talks about how storytelling builds Trust and empathy. When you're hearing a story you feel for the characters involved and it allows you to open your mind more to the things outside of your personal Realm.
In the next section, Simple Method for Parents, Sarosy shares the inspiration for the blog as a whole. He talks about the storytelling Loop and what that looks like. In the storytelling you Loop you start by identifying something real in your child's life, like a toy, a game, or something else relevant to them. Then, you take the real object and tell a story about it. This creates A New Perspective for the child to see. The final thing that happens is that the children will pick up the story for themselves and gain new creativity related to the object. What this Storytelling Loop does is create a stitch between reality and imagination that the child can connect to. What I really like about this blog post, is that at the end of it I found out that Sarosy started it to help dads build relationships with their kids.
This blog post immediately made me interested because of the date it was posted. I was working in a middle school during the covid19 pandemic and we closed our doors on March 14th. I remember all the anxiety that I felt along with my students because of the unknown. No one knew what was coming next, no one knew how we do our work, and no one knew what our students' home life would look like. The idea of calming this anxiety really caught my attention. In this blog, students came into kindergarten and Andrew still had a cough. He had been sick the week prior but totally fine the weekend leading up to school. His mom was nervous to send him back but knew that he was feeling okay.
The students appeared nervous when Andrew was coughing at school. The teacher caught on to this and knew the best way to settle the students’ anxiety was to tell a story. She told the story of Old Man Cough, Sneezer, and the Fever Fairies. Throughout the story, she added things that her students would connect to like a cough, firefighters, and even chicken soup. She recounts seeing the smiles in the ease come over her students. She States in the blog, “Stories are inherently soothing. They help a child feel seen.” this blog is so powerful because it shows how something as simple as a story can calm students and adults. And raise the spirits of everyone involved in the story.
This blog opened by talking about an elementary class that is in school during the COVID-19 pandemic. The teacher takes the kids outside of class and one asks about being in a bubble. She then sits the kids down underneath a tree that like the world during this time had a sickness that they were tracking, and shares with them a story about “The Bubble Prince”. After this, we get some information about how storytelling bridges the gap between reality and Imagination. The research shows that storytelling is a great way to help students understand what's going on around them and a good way for teachers to understand the students better based on their perspectives. Storytelling is a good plan according to this blog post because it allows us to feel for the characters in the story and their circumstances.
According to the blog post, “Storytelling is how our brains prefer to think.” It's easier to think that way, especially for children storytelling has taken place since the beginning of time and it's always been used in this way to make information easier to process. The blog does talk about how it is important to talk about some things up front and outright, but putting them into a story makes it easier to digest. The blog is wrapped up by visiting back to “The Bubble Prince”, however, the audience reading the blog is challenged to complete the “The Bubble Prince” bubbleprint story on their own and use it to grow closer to our children and students.
7 Comedy Stories:
-The Couch Potato by Jory John
-Monsters Love Cupcakes by Mike Austin
-Cake vs. Pie by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen
-I Live in a Tree Trunk by Meg Fleming
-The Sour Grape by Jory John
-A Spoonful of Frogs by Casey Lyall
-Got Your Nose! by Alan Katz
References
Sarosy, J. West, S. (2019, December 12). How to Tell Stories to Children. How to Tell Stories to Children. https://howtotellstoriestochildren.com/blog1/video-amp-podcast-introduction-to-storytelling'
Sarosy, J. West, S. (2021, September 13). How to Tell Stories to Children. How to Tell Stories to Children. https://howtotellstoriestochildren.com/blog3/stories-for-back-to-school-changes
Sarosy, J. West, S. (2020, March 7). How to Tell Stories to Children. How to Tell Stories to Children. https://howtotellstoriestochildren.com/blog1/worried-about-illness-stories-calm-anxiety
Comments
Post a Comment