Storytelling Activities & Lesson Ideas
This collection of storytelling activities-developed by storyteller/author Heather Forest for her storytelling workshops with students, teachers, and librarians-can be expanded by educators into language arts lesson plans to support speaking, listening, reading and writing skills.
*Storytellers on Tour
*1001 Nights Festival
*A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
*A Story Treasure Hunt
*Old Time Radio Show
*Finding Stories in Songs
*Story Circle
*Local Historians
*Collecting Family Stories
*Puzzle Tale: Putting the Pieces Together
*Front Door: An Imaginary Journey
*Chain Sentence
*Describing a Stone
*Spontaneous Poetry
*The Autobiography of Anything
*Devising Plot Structures: Creating New Tales
*Proverbs: Wisdom Tales Without the Plot
*Creating Personal Fables
*Storytelling Festival Day
*Art History is Filled with Stories
Storytellers on Tour
Have students practice retelling folktales in their classroom. When students feel confident, teams of three or four students at a time can then take their tales to other classes for a storytelling concert. If older students are sent to the younger grades, ask the younger grades to thank the storytellers with drawings inspired by their stories.
1001 Nights Festival
This is a continuing storytelling session in which a story is begun and then left open-ended at a crucial point. The next day the story is completed and a new one begun and left open-ended at an exciting moment. Stories could be selected from the Tales of the Arabian Nights and told in this fashion, as in the style of Shahrazad, its great storyteller. According to legend, she told stories in this way to a sultan for 1001 nights, which is why the stories of the Arabian Nights is also called "1001 Nights."
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words
A class selects a classical painting. Looking at the painting for inspiration, the class constructs the first few sentences of a tale through group discussion and suggestion. The paragraph is then sent on to another class which reads the first paragraph and adds on another. The process is repeated including as many classes as possible until the tale seems finished. All the classes then gather to hear the result of their group effort read out loud and to see the painting, that inspired the story.
A Story Treasure Hunt
A class selects a well-known fable or folktale. The plot is simplified into a sequence of events that can be transcribed onto cards with short sections of the tale on each. Students hide the cards out of sequence throughout the school or classroom. A treasure map showing the exact location where all the cards are hidden, is given to another class (Or, with clues, one card can lead to the next). Groups of students must find the cards and assemble them in correct order. The treasure is finding the WHOLE story. Two classes can trade treasure hunts by putting the stories on two different-colored cards. The treasure hunts can go on simultaneously and, when each class has found the other's story, they confirm it by assembling it, learning the plot and sending representatives to retell it, or to act it out as a skit to the other class.
