Week 3: Storytelling in the Classroom

Reading the article about storytelling amazed me learning how storytelling is such a powerful tool to understand an idea, as well as to get a message across. Storytelling literally activates our brain and we can effectively retain what we learn. It was interesting to self-reflect and realize I do in fact think of everything as a narrative. I think, “Hmm, what should I cook today?... maybe I should cook this or what if I buy something instead”, I create a little story in my head! Knowing about how story-telling helps the retention of information I started thinking of ways I can incorporate that in lessons. I quickly thought of math. Now I know math is not everyone’s cup of tea, especially when it comes to lengthy word problems. English language learners struggle so much in this area for the obvious reasons. They look at long word problems and think “Oh no, this is too hard!”. But what if I students actually pictured themselves in the story and changed a couple details to make it more relatable? Maybe putting themselves in the story can help them relate thus creating some type of connection and understanding the main concept. For example, percentages. I finally understood the crucial use of percentages when it came to shopping, sales, and coupons. If students can’t seem to understand percentages maybe creating a relatable story about going shopping for a new game or phone and getting a discount can trigger meaning behind calculating percentages. Same thing with fractions. If we create a story about pizza and how we can slice it into different amounts creating portions or fractions can maybe facilitate understanding them. Storytelling in the classroom can open up so many ways to help explain different concepts. Not only for math, but for other subjects too!