Storytelling and Creative Response Tasks
David Heathfield, UK
David Heathfield is a freelance storyteller and teacher trainer based in Exeter, UK. Many practical and creative storytelling techniques feature in his new book Storytelling With Our Students (DELTA Publishing 2014). E-mail: davidheathfield@hotmail.co.uk, www.davidheathfield.co.uk
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Introduction
Exploring metaphors personally and creatively
Before you tell
While you are telling
Creative response task
The Nets Full of Fish
Creative Response Tasks are ones designed in such a way that learners can express themselves freely within a simple and supportive framework in response to spoken or written text. They are particularly suitable in a class where students are told a folk tale from one of world’s oral cultures. There are no right or wrong answers so students do not feel they are being assessed. Most of the creative response tasks I propose in language teaching focus on mental imagery, personal interpretation and students making connections between stories and their own experiences.
These may involve listeners expressing what they imagine individually – by talking or writing about the story, drawing, painting or making models of characters and events, or retelling the story.
Equally, they can involve pairs or groups of learners listening attentively to each other and engaging with each other’s creative ideas – for example, through comparing responses, doing roleplay and collaborative retelling.
More often than not, they involve both.
When learning creatively and collaboratively in this way, students become more open to new ideas and begin to enjoy themselves more. They are amazed and delighted by their own and other students’ inner worlds being revealed. The learning is deep and memorable because students give and receive so freely.
When learners share their imaginative responses to a story they have been told together, trust is quickly built up between them – so there is a strong sense of group cohesion and confidence.
When doing creative response tasks, teachers can encourage learners to do the following – as suggested by Alida Gersie in Earthtales (Green Print 1992):
- Encourage a free flow of ideas and value every contribution.
- Enjoy and recognise different ways of doing a task.
- Allow for and acknowledge different and unexpected responses.
- Show genuine interest in one another’s contributions.
- Make sure all the group members have an equal share of time and attention.
The Nets Full of Fish is an example of a myth story with a creative response task. The creative response task is similar to one of the many which are included in my book Storytelling With Our Students, but the story itself is not one of the forty in the book. It is suitable for adult and teenage learners with intermediate to advanced English. You can watch extracts of a lesson where adult EAP students are doing the lesson described below here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt2dHPVlXBI
Telling The Nets Full of Fish has had a powerful effect on students I teach. Most people can relate to the idea of new knowledge arriving in the wake of despair. The more you rehearse telling a story like this in your own words in advance of the lesson, the more your students will have a sense of you giving them the story and the more impact your storytelling will have.
Ask the class: If someone feels their life has no meaning, what advice could you give them? The students listen to a few different ideas from each other. These might include: asking for help, going on a journey, trying a new activity, counting their blessings, saying a prayer or meditating.
Show your students a Google Earth image of the Micronesian island of Oneop on Lukunor Atoll and zoom out to reveal its location in the middle of the Pacific. Let them know that you are going to tell a myth story from Lukunor and that it involves some items which are connected to traditional life in Micronesia. Show them Google images of the following items from the story and list them on the board: a fishing spear (see http://onebigphoto.com/spear-fishing/), taro roots, breadfruit, a Micronesian fishing canoe, sharp coral.
By now your students will be anticipating the story and getting ready to listen.
Tell this tale in a clear and simple way to make it easy for your students to interpret the powerful metaphors it contains. Use distinct voices for the Huge Old Woman and for the Hungry Brothers.
Mime actions to make it easier for your students to understand
Pause briefly after saying ‘He prepared to die’ in order to add suspense, and again after ‘Each time he took care not to be touched for he knew he would be killed’.
Part 1:
Say: Choose a moment in the story, and hold a still image of that moment in your mind. See it. Feel it. Hear it. Smell it. Taste it. Now spend a couple of minutes drawing or writing (or drawing and writing) about that moment on a piece of paper.
As each student finishes, invite them to stand and make pairs with others who have finished, and to talk out about the image they imagined and described. It is for the students to decide whether or not they actually show each other their writing or drawing.
Early finishers might talk to five or six different partners, while late finishers might just talk to two or three.
Part 2:
Make sure each student has a piece of A4 paper divided into four sections, and ask them to write the name of each of the three main characters/ groups of characters in the story in the middle of a different section and leave the fourth section empty:
Young man
Old woman
Nine brothers
Now slowly dictate or write on the board the concept nouns below in pairs of opposites. Working alone, the students write these words in the different sections. They might associate both opposites eg ignorance and knowledge with the same character or put ignorance with one character and knowledge with a different character. They can put any word in more than one section and they can put any word in the empty section if they do not associate it with any of the characters.
ignorance knowledge
honesty deceit
courage cowardice
intelligence foolishness
freedom captivity
kindness cruelty
independence dependence
selflessness selfishness
hope despair
joy sorrow
Give students a couple of minutes to prepare to talk about some of their choices and to say in each case which point in the story they are thinking of (there are no right or wrong answers.)
Then the whole class listens while a volunteer student talks to you about one of the nouns they have chosen. Your role is just to understand their response to the story – not to judge what they say. You might prompt them to say more by asking ‘Can you tell me more about that?’
Remind them that when they listen to stories, they all find their own meanings – the characters and events are metaphors for aspects of their lives. The meanings and metaphors they find depend on culture, background, temperament and personal experience.
Ask the students to sit in pairs or groups of three and to listen to each other’s interpretations.
They should listen for similarities and differences between the ways they understand the story of The Nets Full of Fish.
They should remember the differences, especially, so that they are ready to talk about them together afterwards.
When the groups have had enough time, bring the whole class together to talk about the differences in their interpretations of The Nets Full of Fish.
As a follow-up activity, the students can write freely about the story, and what it means to them – with regard to their own lives. This writing could be redrafted and presented as a wall display or a class book.
This is my retelling of the myth story How Fishing Methods were Learned on Lukunor from the book Never and Always, Micronesian Legends, Fables and Folklore by The Students of The Community College of Micronesia, Compiled and Edited by Gene Ashby, Rainy Day Press, 1989. This book was given to me by an American teacher who came to a World Storytelling event I hosted at the IATEFL Conference and who had taught English in Micronesia.
Long long ago, a young man lived on the Micronesian island of Oneop with his three sisters. Their parents had died and, as first born, he was now the head of his family. Sometimes he brought home a fish he had caught with his spear and sometimes he brought home taro roots from the taro patch.
One day he came home with no fish and just four taro roots, three larger ones for his sisters and a small ugly one of a different kind for himself. He asked his sisters to prepare his taro to eat while he slept. His sisters respected their brother but they felt pity for him when they saw his taro was so small and ugly.
When he woke up, they served him one of the large taro. The brother felt he had been tricked and was so upset that he wanted to end his life. First he went to hang himself from a tree but the people of the island would not leave him alone. So he set out to drown himself in the deep sea. He tied one end of a rope around his neck and tied the other end to a heavy rock which he set upon a log. As the light faded at the end of the day, he swam with the rock floating on the log next to him, away from the island to where the water was deep. Just as he was about to push the rock off the log to drown himself, he saw a large dark shape ahead of him. At first he thought it was a whale, but as he swam closer he saw it was an unknown island. He became curious and untied the rope. He swam until he reached the dark shore and then searched until, in the middle of the island, he saw a strange old woman. Her eyebrows were so long that they covered her eyes and she could not see. She was preparing nine round breadfruit and kept counting them by feeling them with her hands. When she finished counting she started again. The hungry young man crept up and took one of the breadfruit, but the old woman counted just eight and cried out:
‘Who has taken the breadfruit? Give it back and I will do you a favour.’
The young man took pity on the old woman and put the breadfruit back in front of her. When she found it she said ‘Hide quickly. My nine sons are coming and they will surely kill you. They will smell you and they will catch you with their fingers.’
The young man looked around the cave for somewhere to hide but there was nowhere. He could hear the nine brothers coming and he became more and more afraid. As they entered they cried ‘Here is the smell of a stranger. Let us find him and kill him.’
The young man was afraid of the nine huge brothers. They too had eyebrows which had grown so long that they could not see him. They searched for him, reaching out with their fingers and the young man was so afraid that he could not move. He prepared to die…
Suddenly he was grabbed by the old woman and she held him so close to her that he was hidden by her long eyebrows. Under her breath she said ‘Be still. Here they will not look for you.’
After a long time searching, the nine brothers became hungry, ‘Give us our fruit, mother!’
The old woman handed each of her sons one breadfruit. After eating their fruit, the brothers fell into a deep sleep.
Now the young man reached up with his sharp stone blade and cut the old mother’s eyebrows so that she could see for the first time. She was full of joy. The young man wondered how to return to Oneop and she said, ‘Soon my sons will wake up and go fishing near your island. Go with them but do not let them find you. You must stay downwind of them so that they do not smell you. Otherwise they will kill you.’
In the middle of the night the young man secretly followed the brothers to their canoe and climbed inside. He took great care to stay downwind of them and out of their reach. They had soon sailed to the coral reef near to the island of Oneop. There they took a net from the bottom of the canoe. The young man had never seen such things before and was amazed to see the brothers cast the net into the water. Soon the net was filled with fish. Quickly the young man slipped past the first of the brothers, leaning from the canoe and tying the net to the coral just under the water. He tied the net in many different places. Each time he took care not to be touched for he knew he would be killed. Finally when the brothers tried to pull in their catch, the net remained stuck fast. They pulled for a long time but they could not untie their net from the coral because they could not see. In anger they left the net full of fish and returned to their island. The young man silently let himself down into the sea and swam back to the shore of his island. His sisters had believed he was drowned and so were happy to find their brother alive. He swam with the other men of the island out to the net and together they untied it from the coral. They brought in the greatest catch of fish any of them had ever seen. There was a great celebration and since that day the people of the island of Oneop have lived in plenty because they learnt to fish with nets.
Please check the Methodology & Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching with Minimum Materials course at Pilgrims website.
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