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Press Play to hear Storyteller Tim Ereneta talks about how he brought Storytelling to the Fringe on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf. Here’s the best thing about a storytelling performance in a Fringe Festival: I don’t have to wait to be discovered. I don’t have to worry about offending my host with my material. [...]

or Teaching Without Pressuring the Teacher to Teach or the Child to Learn

Stories and songs are natural teachers and create natural paths to literacy.
Stir a child’s imagination with stories, songs, and poems, and you feed the roots of learning. Once memorized, a single sentence from a piece of prose, a song, or a poem, creates a model for many hundreds of sentences to come.

The linguistic significance of these models looks deceptively simple, but every sentence or stanza, no matter how short, is packed with grammatical and syntactic models. Let’s take a closer look at one simple stanza from my song, Bug in My Hand:

There’s a bug in my hand,

and it climbed on my nose,

and it played a bass drum,

bum, bum, bum, bum.

Here are a few of the grammatical (syntactic) structures in this one short stanza.

there’s: non-referential ‘there’ and subject-predicate agreement
a bug: noun phrase with singular indefinite article ‘a’
in my hand: prepositional phrase, including possessive ‘my’
and: coordinating conjunction
it: referential pronoun in place of the noun ‘bug’
on my nose: prepositional phrase with parallel structure to first prepositional phrase
a bass drum: noun phrase with adjective-noun combination

These are only a few of the syntactical structures that have been used to build this simple stanza. Memorized in a state of play, every one of the patterns illustrated above and those not mentioned become models for linguistic development and literacy in the future.

What a wonderful tool, especially when working with reluctant learners. (See my blog entry: On reluctant learners)

Reluctant learners are afraid, moody, and often angry. So as not to fail, they don’t try. They play every trick in the book, from daydreaming and disrupting class to acting out. Eventually, if not helped, they may turn into problem kids.

But what if a teacher could turn these reluctant learners around? What if a teacher could teach these reluctant learners without them knowing they were being taught?

Stories, songs, and poems are the key. And they not only work for reluctant learners. They also help to reinforce proper syntax in the minds of even the best of students.

I often talk to educators about ‘giving the gift’. Excite young people to the wonders of stories, songs, and poems and you will be giving everyone of them a ‘gift’, the ‘gift’ of literacy, a ‘gift’ that lasts a lifetime.

Max Tell, a.k.a. Robert Stelmach, the International Troubadour, sings and tells stories from the heart. http://maxtell.ca/content/

Press Play to hear Ruth Stotter speak on working with props in storytelling performances on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.

Ruth Stotter Writes....
I love the idea that as a storyteller, you travel light. A "bag" of stories takes up no room and is easy to carry around. But I also love interspersing stories with props - both as a folklorist carrying on old traditions and as a way of adding a visual component. Puppets, masks, and origami are among my favorites. You asked why I am currently so intrigued with string stories and I will try to answer. It never ceases to amaze me that with a simple loop of string you can make hundreds of figures, and that these string designs can be used to tell stories.I think they were the first picture books. Tellers in traditional cultures twisted and turned the string to make illustrations to accompany their oral texts.

When I went to Easter Island, where they still hold an annual string story competition, I found that they were using a rough hewn string from a plant and told stories in the old Rapa Nui language, not the modern Rapa Nui, nor Spanish, which is the official language. In Fiji I met a man who easily copied my string figures. I found it difficult to learn his, as I am used to book illustrations. Besides stories, of course, the loop of string is used for stunts and magic tricks.

Organizing the String Gathering in San Francisco in 2004 I was happy to meet other members of the International String Figure Association. This organization sends members a monthly string figure-design as well as various newsletters and books. Several of the people who attended the Gathering brought power point presentations of their experiences collecting string figures from Yupik Eskimoes, Navajos, and various Oceanic Rim countries.

I was pleased to be invited to write the section "String Figures" for Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Storytelling and Folklore, edited by Josepha Sherman. That led to my writing A Loop of String.

So, you see, my friends, all of my interests - origami, puppets, magic, folklore and storytelling - coalesce in this seemingly simple folk craft! I guess the bottom line (literally in this letter ) is that as a storyteller I find it challenging and irresistible to adapt and adopt string figures as part of my storytelling performance.

Bio: Ruth Stotter's kaleidoscope activities in storytelling include telling stories at a local Rennaisance Faire for six summers, producing and hosting "The Oral Tradition" radio program on KUSF-SF for six years, directing the Dominican University storytelling program for 14 years*, teaching and performing in Portugal, France, England, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, India and Africa. She is the author of About Story, More About Story, The Golden Axe, Smiles: 101 Stunts and You're On!. She has chaired and presented papers at meetings of the American Folklore Society and for several years served on the ASF Aesop Committee, which selects the best children's books based on folklore. Her honors include the Reading the World Award from the University of San Franc

Press Play to hear Catherine Burns who is Artistic Director of The Moth speaking on diamonds in the rough, coaching new storytellers on the Art of Storytelling with Children.

The Moth is America’s #1 storytelling podcast with over 600,000 downloads a month and at least 100,000 listeners. Catherine Burns is one of the minds behind the curtain at The Moth storytelling main stage in NYC and LA.

The Moth storytelling website.