TEACHERS

Educators at registered* high schools will have access to a unit plan, individual lesson plans and a full complement of reproducible materials to aid in the instruction of storytelling.

Teachers will be able to use a Live Chat, conference calls, and blogs for support from StoriesLive! professional artist / educators who are also professional storytellers.

Storytelling in the curriculum?

A study of the timeless art of storytelling while learning to tell a compelling story about one's life experiences will allow students to meet and perhaps exceed many of the ELA Standards found in the Massachusetts English Language Arts Curriculum Framework: Working Draft June 2010

Below is an outline of unit plan, individual lesson plans and the reproducible materials for instructors of storytelling. PDFs of this material will be available for registered schools.

Key: R= reproducible T= teachers notes S= student handout or graphic organizer

I. Introduction

For students T
For teachers T

Before you start

Unit assignment sheet R T S
Differentiated lesson ideas T
Pre-Unit assessment T R
Shyness and anxiety evaluations T R

II. Lesson plans

Lesson Plan #1 T

teacher's notes T

Lesson Plan #2 T

teacher's notes T

Lesson Plan #3 T

teacher's notes T

Lesson Plan #4 T

teacher's notes T

III. Handouts

Lesson #1

guided sense memory T
Recipe for a story T R
Storytelling is... T R S
Expectations T R S
Rubric T R S
Beginning middle ends T R S
22 storytelling tips T R S
TAG what it is how to why T R S
HW graphic organizer T R S

Lesson #2

Before Then Now. T
Groups of three. T
HW organizer 5/3/5 T R S
And signature sheet T R S

Lesson #3

voice movement facial expressions 1page T R S
Rehearsal tips T R S
Vocal vocabulary T R S
Vocal warm ups T R S

Lesson #4

Self critique form T R S
Rubric T R S
Listen and evaluate T R S
Vote form T R S
Final assessment form T R S

Appendix
Article "Be heard the first time" T
Article Vocal power and control T
Article Stage fright smashers T
Vocal vocabulary quiz T
Nonverbal communication notes T
Exercises for vocal improv T

Students and faculty of participating schools will receive passwords and access to online support.

2: Oral Presentation (Massachusetts Frameworks )

Planning an effective presentation requires students to match their presentation purpose, medium, style, and format to their intended audience. Frequent opportunities to plan presentations for various purposes and to speak before various groups help students learn how to gain and keep an audience’s attention, interest, and respect.

It has been our experience as visiting educators that the ELA standards from 1.OP.1 to 12.OP.2 are met by only a very few high school students. Note that the framework contains this language in each grade level "Students continue to address earlier standards as needed." Whether this represents a natural developmental quirk of teens or a lack of experience and skills in the education stream, this lack of verbal ability in the general high school population speaks to a desperate need for the remedial and fun activity of personal storytelling. The same sentence and observation "Students continue to address earlier standards as needed" is applied to the Drama standards, also included below.

Here are the Mass DOE ELA standards and the red type highlights the standards especially addressed by storytelling.

1.OP.1 Orally explain personal interests, tell stories, or recite poems, speaking clearly with adequate volume and keeping eye contact with the audience.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

2.OP.1 Elaborate on personal interests and experiences, maintaining focus on the topic.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

3.OP.1 Present information on a text or film, organizing ideas clearly, giving details from the work.

3.OP.2 Use teacher-developed assessment criteria to prepare their presentations.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

4.OP.1 Plan and make informal presentations that maintain a controlling idea and recognizable organization (e.g., a chronological sequence, topics by order of importance, comparison-contrast, or cause and effect).

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

5.OP.1 Present a brief analysis of a text, film, or video, using appropriate gestures, vocabulary, pacing, and evidence from the text, film, or video.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

6.OP.1 Employ purposeful diction and visual aids (or gestures and facial expressions) to make a clear and coherent persuasive argument about a school-based issue.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

7.OP.1 Orally explain the logic or lack of logic in a persuasive argument about a local issue in a local newspaper, supplying evidence and using appropriate techniques of delivery for effect.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

8.OP.1 Distinguish informal English from formal English and decide upon the level of formality needed for talking to different audiences.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

8.OP.2 Create a scoring guide based on categories supplied by the teacher (content, presentation style) to prepare and assess a presentation on a local issue to a specific audience.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

9.OP.1 Analyze a videotaped speech (or a story) to determine how the speaker organized the speech, reinforced main points, and used details, examples, particular vocabulary, pacing, repetition, and vocal expression to keep the audience's attention...

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

10.OP.1 Analyze the rhetorical features of well-known speeches (or a story) from the "Golden Age" of American oratory (e.g. speeches by Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Abraham Lincoln)

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

11.OP.1 Deliver a formal speech (or a story) using appropriate delivery and answer questions from the audience about main ideas or details of the speech.

11.OP.2 Create an appropriate scoring guide to prepare one's own ( story) presentation and to assess others'.

Students continue to address earlier standards as needed and

12.OP.1 Deliver a formal speech (or a story) adjusting the delivery as needed to maintain the interest of the audience, and critique the formal speeches given by classmates using a scoring guide.

12.OP.2 Critique a formal speech given by a member of the local community at a public meeting, using a professional scoring guide (e.g., a guide for Toastmasters International contests or a story slam!).

10: Drama

Since ancient times, drama has entertained, informed, entranced, and transformed us as we willingly enter into the other worlds created on stage and screen. In reading dramatic literature, students learn to analyze the techniques playwrights use to achieve their magic. By studying plays, as well as film, television shows, and radio scripts, students learn to be more critical and selective readers, listeners, and viewers of drama.

Grade	Student Learning Standards
PreK	P.D.1 Play characters in informal plays.
K	Students continue to address earlier standard as it applies to grade-appropriate texts and K.D.1 Act out dialogue from a familiar story.
1	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply to grade-appropriate texts and 1.D.1 Identify characters and dialogue in a puppet play or performance by actors.
2	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply to grade-appropriate plays and 2.D.1 Identify characters, setting, dialogue, acts, scenes in a play. 2.D.2 Perform informal plays for an audience, speaking clearly with adequate volume and maintaining eye contact with the audience or other characters.
3	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply to grade-appropriate plays and 3.D.1 Identify elements of plot and character presented through dialogue and/or action in scripts that are read, viewed, listened to, or performed. 3.D.2 Plan and perform readings for an audience, using appropriate expression, clear diction, and adequate volume.
4	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and 4.D.1 Identify and analyze how characters change from the beginning to the end of a play or film.
5	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and 5.D.1 Compare structural elements of dramatic literature (e.g., act, scene, cast of characters, stage directions) and of a story. 5.D.2 Identify similarities and differences between a story or novel and its film or play adaptation.
6	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and 6.D.1 Identify conflict, rising and falling action, climax, and resolution in a play.
7	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and 7.D.1 Identify and describe relationships among elements of setting, plot, points of view, and characterization. 7.D.2 Identify and explain with detail the theme, either explicit or implied, of a play.
8	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across plays and films and 8.D.1 Identify the use of theatre or film/video production techniques (e.g., camera shots, sound, and lighting) to establish narrative elements such as mood, character, plot, or to create special effects in a film.
9	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and films and 9.D.1 Analyze the roles of types of characters (e.g., antagonist, protagonist, hero, chorus, narrator). 9.D.2 Identify the structure and elements of different genres of dramatic literature (e.g., the characters, structure, and themes of a play by Shakespeare or of a classical Greek drama).
10	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and films and 10.D.1 Analyze how dramatic conventions (such as monologue, soliloquy, aside) support, interpret, and enhance the play. 10.D.2 Analyze the dramatic structure of a play by Shakespeare.
11	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and films and 11.D.2 Analyze the theme, structure, and dramatic elements in a play by a major American playwright and relate it to its literary context and literary history.
12	Students continue to address earlier standards as they apply within and across more challenging plays and films and 12.D.1 Analyze the themes, structure, and dramatic elements of a play by a major British playwright in any literary period and relate it to its literary context and literary history.

Here are some guiding principles from the document. Reflections on how these principles and standards can be impacted by the art of storytelling are in italic.

Guiding Principle 1

An effective English language arts curriculum develops thinking and language together through interactive learning.

Storytelling helps students develop their ability to remember, understand, evaluate, and apply the ideas they encounter in the world.

Guiding Principle 2

An effective English language arts curriculum develops students’ oral language and literacy through appropriately challenging learning.

Creating, refining, rehearsing and performing a personal narrative is developmentally and academically appropriate.

Guiding Principle 4

An effective English language arts curriculum emphasizes writing as an essential way to develop, clarify, and communicate ideas in...narrative and expressive discourse.

Through storytelling, students develop their ability to think, to communicate ideas, and to give voice to their inner world and unique life experiences.

Guiding Principle 6

An effective English language arts curriculum provides for literacy in all forms of media.

Multimedia presentations, television, pod casts, film, and videos are prominent modes of communication in the modern world.

All the new media is in need of content. Story is the basic building block of content for all media. It is the lynch pin of multi modal studies and the foundation of all the performing arts.

Guiding Principle 8

An effective English language arts curriculum builds on the language, experiences, and interests that students bring to school.

Storytelling draws on the strengths of linguistic and cultural differences in classrooms and teach students to draw on these different ways of talking and thinking as potential bridges to speaking and writing in standard English.

Guiding Principle 9

An effective English language arts curriculum develops each student’s distinctive writing or speaking voice.

Storytelling helps students develop authentic "voice" with rich, opportunities for exploration, and communication that are organic to the form of oral narrative in performance.

Guiding Principle 10

While encouraging respect for differences in home backgrounds, an effective English language arts curriculum nurtures students’ sense of their common ground as present or future American citizens in order to prepare them for responsible participation in our schools and in civic life.

As students develop their personal narratives they will learn a skill set that will assist them in all areas of reading, writing and critical thinking. Storytelling works for all learning styles. Students will be able to articulate and evaluate their own personal narratives by applying the new strategy to their development of their work effectively.

2: Oral Presentation

It has been our experience as visiting educators that the following standards ( from 1.OP.1 to 12.OP.2) are met by only a very few high school students. Note that the frameworks contains this language in each grade level "Students continue to address earlier standards as needed" Whether it is a natural developmental quirk of teens or a lack of experience and skills in the education stream - this lack of verbal ability in the general high school population speaks to a desperate need for remedial and fun activity of personal storytelling.