”ONLINE STORYTELLING: ENGAGING, PERSONAL, CREATIVEA”

Аннотация

This article is designed to improve students’ ability through online storytelling Key words: intellectually, storytelling, online,emotionally, zoom, facebook How can we engage learners intellectually, emotionally and imaginatively in online storytelling? . Storytelling may be the most effective way to sustain a close relationship with our students when teaching online. When we retell stories from the world’s oral cultures and then do creative response activities with our students, we can use the webcam, the online chat, breakout rooms and digital recordings to humanise the online learning experience. Most of my experience as a storyteller has involved sharing a physical environment whether in classrooms, communal or outdoor spaces and I was not certain before the pandemic that it would be possible to transfer and adapt so many aspects of this creative and communal activity to online learning. As a relatively low-tech teacher, my tendency is to switch off the interactive screen when I enter a physical classroom and use it sparingly only when needed. I prioritise face to face interaction, especially when the students and I are storytelling. When I am teaching online, I do not attempt to replicate physical classroom storytelling but rather adapt it by using the https://scientific-jl.com/luch/ 4 4 6 Часть-41_ Том-21_ Март-2025 basic tools that videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, Teams and Facebook Live offer us. Students put a huge amount of themselves into a story they are being told and they can get insights into each other’s lives, cultures, experiences, attitudes and ways of imagining the world through creative response activities. To illustrate creative storytelling online, let’s look at the Japanese myth tale The Rabbit in the Moon, which was beautifully told in a class I was teaching by Sachi Koyama, a Japanese teacher of English. Here is a recording of Sachi telling the story at a cultural sharing event after rehearsing and telling the story in class. The Rabbit in the Moon There were three friends, Monkey, Fox, and Rabbit. One day, a poor old man appeared and asked the three animals, ‘Please give me food. I’m hungry.’ The kind animals wanted to help. Monkey ran up into the trees, climbing high, picking fruit and nuts. Fox went hunting and caught some small animals. Fox also stole some rice cakes. Monkey and Fox came back to the hungry old man and made a fire to cook the small animals. But Rabbit returned to the fire with no food for the old man. Monkey and Fox laughed and Rabbit felt so sorry. The old man was busy eating when Rabbit said, ‘I have nothing to give you, but you can eat me!’ and jumped into the fire. The old man caught Rabbit and changed into his true self, a great shining god. ‘Rabbit, you are kind and gentle. You are ready to give your life for me. I will put you in the Moon. The Moon will shine kindly and gently down on the world. When the Moon is full, everyone will look up and see the Rabbit in the Moon and remember your gentle kindness.’ https://scientific-jl.com/luch/ 4 4 7 Часть-41_ Том-21_ Март-2025 You can choose from and adapt the sample activities in the storytelling lesson plan below for different folk tales and for different class profiles. You will notice that all of these activities can be done in the physical classroom and have been adapted for online teaching. Before telling Introduce the characters in the story by revealing them one by one to the camera on a hand written list. Using our own handwriting helps personalise the online format: monkey, fox, rabbit, hungry old man Quick-fire Quiz: Set a time limit for students to question you using the chat about the events in the story. Respond orally to their written questions. This might be as short as one minute when you are going to tell a very short tale told to a fast- acting class, but could be as long as three minutes for a longer story told to a slower- paced group of students. You can give away plenty of information in your answers but do not give away the ending. Now students have a skeleton of the story with some bones missing and are ready to make predictions. This is a good moment to put pairs in breakout rooms to creatively tell the story they are imagining. Alternatively you can give students a few minutes to write a summary of the story they are imagining in the chat and to post their summaries all together at the same moment when you signal that they can. Students can listen to or read other students’ predictions. Students are now full of anticipation and ready to listen to you telling the story so that they can compare it with their imagined versions. It is a good idea to ask students to sit quietly and comfortably and rest their fingers while they are listening to the story, allowing themselves space to imagine. After telling Students will probably want to write or say some instant responses to the story. Invite them to write or talk about similarities and differences between the story you told and th