FEATURED POST: STORYTELLING TIPS FOR FAMILIES by Aspen Mock

Original Post: January 29,2020

Source: Excerpt is part of a larger article featured on https://ncte.org/blog/2020/01/storytelling-family-literacy/

This weeks featured post comes to us from Aspen B. Mock, a teacher based in Sidman, Pennsylvania. Ms. Mock currently teaches Composition 9, Honors Composition 9 & AP Literature & Composition 12.

   

An underused medium, oral storytelling offers rich opportunities for family literacy development. It encourages a literate family lifestyle by building a collection of stories celebrating shared experiences and providing topics for conversations and discussions. 

      

TIPS FOR FAMILIES INCLUDE: 

      

Make it an “experience.” 

Build a memorable experience and detail practical ways to schedule storytelling time. For example, in my family we tell stories during dinner, which my 6-year old daughter calls “Dinner Stories.” You can tell stories whenever you have to wait somewhere, and can even have themed nights for storytelling based on holidays, seasons, or current events. Plan some and improvise others; it’s good to have a mix of both! 

     

Co-construction. 

Take turns as speaker and listener; build the story collaboratively. Encourage the use of detail, adding descriptive adjectives and vivid verbs as you journey through your tales. Asking questions throughout the narrative can be a helpful way to clarify, collaborate and build your stories in real time. 

       

Preserve your “work.” 

Play the scribe or use technology to record your stories, making paper or digital versions to preserve them. Typing out or recording a story as it is told and sharing it with other family members on social media can be great fun and involve others, and provides a built-in audience for storytelling. (One tech-savvy option is capturing a visual or digital story through a program like Adobe Spark.) Stores are meant to be retold—remember to revisit your stories and tell them again and again! 

    

There’s an app for that!  

Search out apps that will help you incorporate literacy activities into your daily family life. Your children’s teachers and librarians may have recommendations. For example, an app like ReadyRosie lets you search tutorial videos and implement family literacy activities depending on the ages and stages of your children, from infancy and up. When my eldest daughter was learning her colors, we wrote original poems together; she still joyfully revisits these poems in her journal.

   

My family literacy experiences carried over into

adulthood; during my first year of college, I transcribed our family tales into a collection entitled “Griosach,” an Irish word meaning “burning embers.” The tales my family grew up with, time spent with my grandfather Mac, and the warmth and imaginative elements of that little kitchen, are now preserved and shared as part of our family literacy tradition.

   

I think of “Griosach” as a metaphor for the power of storytelling; if we fan the smoldering embers of our stories, we ignite the light and power of family literacy in ourselves and our community.