Barbara, our guest blogger,
highlights key points about
the importance of accounatbale talk in
classrooms.
Bridging English, Ch. 4
Storytelling
can be used with all age groups and requires many skills. Technology has opened
up the ability to add a visual and auditory track with the narrator’s voice.
The power and beauty of digital storytelling can be created by people around
the world and shared. The student’s judgment between image, word and sound
becomes more decisive. They also use critical thinking about tone and audience.
·
Use of gestures
·
Facial Expressions
·
Body Language
·
Variety in tone of voice to get story across
·
Dramatic placement of a character within a scene
·
Character voices
·
Stories can be rehearsed
Interviewing is oral language
in the classroom using a nonperforming approach. Interviews can be organized in
a variety of formats with many topics and interviewees.
Four Types of
Interviewing:
·
Inside Out: Students themselves are the
interviewees. Classmates interview them to learn what they know and feel and
what they care to reveal.
·
Outside in: People who live beyond the classroom
walls are interviewees.
·
Extensive: Interviews involve more general
information and probes of more public events.
·
Intensive: Interviews that involve questions
that are more personal and inward.
Chart from Bridging
English, 5th Ed, Chapter 4
Value Chat: Students take
the hot seat before the class and answer questions from classmates.
Partner Probe: Students
interview each other in pairs to explore more private thoughts and personal
feelings.
Expert Query: Students ask
individual adults about political insights, career patterns, or specialization
skills.
Retrospective Talk: Students
go outside the classroom to interview grandparents or friendly elders with
questions about their life experiences.
StoryCorps: A national project affiliated with National
Public Radio and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. A
forty minute interview with a loved one can be recorded and is kept at the
Library of Congress.
I found the Readers’ theater a practical and beneficial
strategy that we can all use in our classrooms. It does not require
memorization of lines because student’s can use their scripts to read from.
This takes the pressure off of them so they can participate more freely without
fear or failure. This will help build confidence in students to try other types
of oral activities and be successful in doing so.
I learned from the reading that oral expression is just as
important today as it has always been. We as teachers must encouraged our text
driven, Facebook writing, twittering students to speak from their mouths, not
only through their fingers. They need these oral expressive skills to be able
to interview for a job, express themselves to love ones, and make their
feelings known on important issues in their lives. We as teachers need to give
them a platform they can learn from and use for the rest of their lives. I
enjoyed my time in drama, speech, and debate in high school and college.
Hopefully with the strategies and ideas listed in this chapter we can bring a
new generation of orators to life.
What are your thoughts about this?
Have you tried using readers’ theater, storytelling, or
interviewing in a classroom setting?
Do you have any good ideas to get our
students interested in speaking in class and outside of class?
Bridging English, 5th ed. by Milner &
Milner & Mitchell
