Traditional Oral Storytelling in the Classroom

1. Traditional Oral Storytelling in the Classroom Judy A. Madros

2. Purpose of Research • How can an Athabaskan oral storytelling curriculum be developed that uses traditional oral stories to increase literacy skills in this small rural school in Alaska?

3. Rationale • By bringing culturally responsive instruction (traditional oral stories) into the classroom, students can achieve higher levels of literacy through the listening to stories and creation of transitional readers (picture books) for younger readers in the school.

4. Literature Review • In this project, I addressed the genre of Athabaskan oral storytelling as a bridge to literacy. • My research is based on the theory of a social constructivist, Lev Vygotsky, and how culture, that is, the value, beliefs, customs, and skills of a social group, is transmitted to the next generation (Berk, 1999).

5. Vygotsky (1978) • When students interact with Athabaskan oral storytellers, they enter their zone of proximal development (ZPD) and work at higher levels of competence with the help from the elders. • Storytelling offers students the ability to practice their outside-in literacy skills through the interaction with elders. • The Vygotskian approach to storytelling encourages teachers to offer questions and comments as a source of support to their students.

6. Oral language experience such as storytelling, is a valuable key in addressing students’ academic needs (Snowden, 1995). This became evident as Junior High students used their transitional readers throughout the K-12 classrooms. • Storytelling is not only used for communication purposes, but to teach literacy skills, cooperative learning skills, critical thinking, and to build knowledge of different contexts (Mello, 2001).

7. When students have the opportunity to retell stories they have heard, and search for their own stories, they begin to develop an understanding of themselves and their world (Hamilton and Weiss, 1990). • Traditional oral stories help students develop the ability to create a narrative (Bloome, Katz, and Champion, 2003). • “If you have no shared canon of stories (with the children), then your separate expectations of stories will be different, and you lack the cultural context which supports the stories and vice versa” (Armstrong, 2003, p.15).

8. Vygotskian theory supports the notion that through interaction with text “children transfer the understandings and skills they have gleaned from dialogues with others to their own literacy-related discourse…they converse not just with themselves but all with the text narrative” (Berk & Winsler, 1995, p.115). • Culturally relevant pedagogy has been described by a number of researchers as an effective means of meeting the academic and social needs of culturally diverse students (Ladson-Billings, 1994).

9. This traditional oral storytelling curriculum supports the researcher Fox (2000), who asserts that storytelling with children is the single most important activity that teachers can utilize to help their students in school.

10. Methodology • Elder interviews • 4 respectable elders (2 gentlemen and 2 honorary women) • Through these informal interviews, the curriculum was developed. • Time frame: twice a week, 6-8 weeks, depending on the availability of the elders and lasted 30-60 minutes.

11. Elder Interviews • From these interviews, the realization came that traditional oral stories are still in high demand and there is a definite need for it in the school curriculum. Traditional oral storytelling can serve as a vehicle for building knowledge about Athabaskan culture and awaken younger generations.

12. Tapes were transcribed and developed into transitional readers • After the transcription of the Athabaskan oral stories shared by elders in a format similar to the way it had originally been told, students retold and illustrated their own stories.

13. Through the Eyes of the Elders: A Story Telling Curriculum • This curriculum was developed to introduce junior high teachers and students to the Athabaskan art of oral storytelling. The lessons can be adapted to meet the needs of older students.

14. Lesson 1: Introduces the elements of storytelling • Lesson 2: Students create a story by using long-recognized, basic elements that make a storyline coherent and interesting • Lesson 3: Explains the cultural role of storytelling and ask students to compare/contrast two different stories. • Lesson 4: Prepares students to interview elders • Lesson 5: Prepares students to compose and tell their own stories • Lesson 6: Introduces students to the process of planning, writing, illustrating, and publishing their own children’s picture book.

15. Students are transcribing the Athabaskan oral stories told by the elders.

16. Students are illustrating the transcribed Athabaskan oral stories.

34. Final Reflections • By doing this project, I found out that using traditional oral stories in the junior high classroom was a surefire way to enhance the literacy arts in education and definitely a way to motivate students, even the most reluctant, to connect with their culture and learning. • During the sharing of these Athabaskan traditional oral stories, students in the different classrooms held a state of attentive listening.