Shout-outs will be updated regularly as they come in. Giving a shout-out is a great way to recognize your peers for their work, talent, and living our institutional values, and to contribute to a culture of appreciation, community, and kindness. Storytelling has been around as long as humankind.A simple gesture can brighten up someone's day. It is one of the most effective ways to communicate an important truth to another person. It is a connection point between two people. It gives meaning, context, and understanding in a world that is often filled with chaos and disorder. Because of this, educators must use stories if they hope to reach their students. Stories will stay with people much longer than facts or statistics. If a teacher becomes an excellent storyteller, he or she can ensure that any concept they teach will be remembered for years to come. Stories don’t just work well for narratives they can be used to illustrate scientific or mathematical processes as well. Take for example the difference between learning a formula, and the ability to solve that problem in the context of a real-life example. Stories bring information, knowledge, and truth to life. When you compose your storyline, be it a fictional story to teach a lesson, or a non-fiction example, make sure that each part of the story is essential to the ending. Anything that does not affect the outcome in some way (directly or indirectly) can be hacked off the story.Įach character, point, or principle must somehow relate to the main point you are trying to drive home. Let’s take for example, a story about the planets. You may be trying to help students memorize the order of the solar system. Any tale you concoct to help illuminate the facts must be related to the planets. It is not the time to talk about black holes, supernovas, or even the size of each planet. In writing, it is called an inciting incident.
You hook the listener in by presenting a problem that encourages them to keep listening. You can use this tactic in any lesson.Ĭreating a world in which it is taken away reveals the ultimate importance of the process you are describing.įor example, if you are teaching the concept of photosynthesis, start your story by imagining a world in which all the flowers didn’t have leaves. You create a problem that the story (in this case photosynthesis) solves. In many cases, students don’t realize how many principles they take for granted (gravity, light, etc.). Stories have a depth of meaning when there is a theme. However, it isn’t always easy to write a story with a theme in mind. Rather, write the story first-with all the points you want to cover. When you’ve finished, stand back from the story for a moment to see if you can draw out a theme. This is especially important when your story relates to incidents in the past. History can be a boring subject without a lot of real-life application.
Themes help connect the past with the present, and ultimately the future. Don’t be discouraged if once you find your theme, you have to rework and rewrite the story. This is common. See also 50 Questions To Help Students Think About What They ThinkĬomplicated stories aren’t necessarily better. If your audience is young, simple is obvious. However, even older audiences can be profoundly impacted when you take a complex idea and reduce it to a nugget that can be remembered.
Scientific principles like gravity and electricity can be difficult for young minds. Juggling demonstration speech central idea how to#.