Discover the act of storytelling

Ask a class: “Does anyone know a story?” And many hands will raise. Now ask them:
“Who wants to tell a story they know?” The few children who have kept their hands raised will certainly have someone in their family circle who tells stories orally.

In this phase, the aim is to allow all students to discover and experience oral storytelling, without the support of a book. The discovery phase covers as many sessions as necessary until some children first dare to tell a story (usually 2 to 5 sessions).

Imitation is the first means of learning. Here, the teacher (and/or an external speaker if necessary) is the main speaker and tells several tales, of varying complexity and duration.

To drive children’s desire to tell stories, the adult must feel comfortable with their story, must believe in what they are saying. Without conviction, how can they expect their audience to believe in their story? To do this, the adult must use their own words, their own gestures, while feeling free to interact with the listeners. This is how they can allow listeners to form the mental pictures and associations that make up a story.

It is the emotions, the inner states that these listeners go through that allow them to understand and picture the story through their own mental portrayal – rather than the words themselves.

To reach free speech

This phase is an occasion to offer children an immersion in speech and storytelling in order to awaken in them the desire to tell the stories that they have heard themselves. This moment must be a time of freedom to listen for all. The teacher will have to be patient and wait for the children to request to speak. Some will very quickly seize the opportunity to tell, others will take longer. In addition to becoming familiar with the act of storytelling, and allowing each child to build a common storytelling culture, listening to the stories will allow them to:

  • Practising active listening and memorization.
  • Create their own mental images.
  • Understand the logical structure of the story.
  • Expand their vocabulary, phrasing , ways of constructing speech.

The transition to the next phase will depend on the speed at which speech becomes accessible in the classroom. In some groups, children ask to speak at the third session, in others it is sometimes necessary to wait until the sixth session…

What is at stake with repetition

To take ownership of a story, it is better to listen to it several times. Here is how the perception of a story (active listening) can change from one session to the next:

First listening:
discovering the story.

Second listening:
we check if we have understood correctly, we appreciate some details better.

Third listening:
we acquire the whole story by seeing it as a whole. We possibly connect it to other ones by discovering or constructing hidden meanings – it is a stage of interpretation.

Fourth listening:
we take ownership of the story, we have an active knowledge of it, we can tell it in our own words.

Teachers, you can do it!

For children to start speaking, they must first have a model. Children will be all the more likely to do so if it is their teacher, and not an outside facilitator, who sets an example for them. Children will see storytelling as an activity in its own right, as a skill worth learning and cultivating. In practice, children tend to be much better at telling stories than at reading them out loud.

Some teachers initially doubt their abilities to tell stories, but storytelling often reveals their inner talent at it. Even without experience, the teacher must allow themselves to start telling stories: just because they have never told a story before does not mean that they cannot do so. In addition, children respect the teacher’s speech. So go on!

Stories have been put in books, but we can get them out. Some will argue that because they are already so well written, we could not and should not change their wording. But yes, we can change them! Close the book. You already know the story, try to say it, trust yourself. Be bold with your words, your emotions. A tale can be told without a book or illustrations, but not without your voice, which makes it come to life.

Il ne s’agit pas de faire un spectacle artistique, mais d’enseigner aux enfants à prendre la parole de façon structurée. It is not a matter of delivering an artistic performance, but of teaching children to speak in a structured way. Use your body, your voice, take the time required to install these images. You do not have to tell the story in a theatrical way, or perfectly well. Children like stories and are an easy audience. And remember: they don’t pay attention to the storyteller when they are listening to a tale, but mostly just to the tale itself.

To go further

To find out more, read the full guide “Storytelling at school to master speech”, written in the framework of the European project, Seeds of Teller.