Storytelling techniques for teachers in pre and primary education
February 6, 2022 Sunday,09:00 - February 11, 2022 Friday,15:00Storytelling in the Primary Classroom is a course about how to use oral storytelling and storytelling techniques in primary education. The course will be hosted and run in the beautiful Storytelling Castle Alden Biesen in Belgium, the home of the biggest international storytelling festival in Europe. It offers five days of presentations, workshops & performances.
Storytelling in the classroom is much more than telling stories in the classroom. Stories, storytelling and narrative teaching approaches are known to help improve children’s verbal and communication skills in the mother tongue and/or in a foreign language. It also impacts imagination, creativity, social and civic competences, values, intercultural understanding, cultural awareness and expression. By offering subject content as a narrative, transformed into images, one improves the quality of the transfer of this content. A school where education is partly offered through storytelling approaches will have a greater appeal on pupils’ motivation because of the open atmosphere, the interactive and creative elements and the valuing of different cultures.
Although this power of storytelling as an educational tool is widely recognised, storytelling as such is hardly ever included in initial teacher training curricula throughout Europe. Therefor Storytelling Castle Alden Biesen sets up a series of in-service training courses on this topic.
The first part of the course pays attention to the telling of stories, tackling elements such as to tell in narrative structures, to use appropriate language, to add description, dialogue, contrast, repetition; switch to different times, places, characters; play with rhythm, silence, humour, tension … The second part offers a methodological approach for using storytelling in the classroom, for narrative teaching and learning. Here the focus is on educational guidelines and offers a set of practical exercises and tips and tricks.
The main trainer at the course will be a professional storyteller, Michael Harvey. Guest speakers will add specific topics to the programme.
THIS COURSE IS ELIGIBLE FOR ERASMUS+ KA1-FUNDING.
