Collaborative Story Telling

Image Source: educ.csmv.qc.ca/.../story/storyteller2.htm

Story telling is one of the oldest forms of teaching and learning practices. Story telling is popular as it provides the learner to think, extrapolate, derive meaning and context and relate to ones experience.

This year my son got into Grade-I. He has started reading short sentences with 3-4 letter words and shows eagerness to read the new stories. I was also eager to read his English textbook. The present text books have undergone undergone positive change.

The first story in the book was titled “The Thirsty Crow”. I read the story and found that the only change in the story line was that the crow after drinking water passes on the message to other birds.

I read the story from the book and replied to his queries based on the illustrations. I told the story in the usual approach:
· narrated the characters.
· Explained the Context, Set the scene. (Location, time and background)
· Explained the sequence of events and how the situation resolved itself.
· Conclusions or lessons learnt.

But I was wondering later, whether there can be some different approach to telling stories. Some days later, I tried telling the same story differently.

I brought white sheets with few colour pencils. I started by drawing a sketch of bright Sun, Tree, Cloud and a character 'Crow'. I scribbled words around these elements by reading aloud. My son coloured the Sun, Tree and others elements quickly. The story moved forward, since the crow was wandering in hot afternoon, he became thirsty and started looking for water. We drew the sequence of the events; I drew a pot with little water lying under the tree. During this story telling exercise another participant joined us. The story went on as usual and ended with crow drinking water.

How was this story telling session different from the previous sessions?
During the course of this exercise, my son drew a black worm which the crow ate before drinking water. He added few more words in his vocabulary. He got engaged and involved in the process and became crow himself. The crow in the story also felt that he could fly in the clouds and sip water from the clouds. The other participant added and sketched; the crow waiting for clouds to rain and the crow directly sipping water by opening his beak.

This approach of storytelling I feel, offered flexibility and the freedom to interpret it the way the learners thought. In fact, the character started thinking and took decisions.

I have started thinking that more than the story; the approach to storytelling can offer experience and make you think.

Taking the clue, I felt the need to google to see what are the new approaches of storytelling in collaborative way. The first Google result connected me to http://www.storybird.com/. Story birds are short, visual stories that you make with family and friends to share- the site reads. The users can use characters, cartoons, colours to make stories in the form of slide. The site is fantastic. But I am looking for a service where more than one participants can write, sketch, colour, add sound in collaboration and online.