Performance Literacy Through Storytelling

Teaching to the standards is effortless, motivating, and engaging when storytelling is part of the K-8 teaching week.

Learning how to write and tell a story to an audience directly supports several speaking/listening, reading, and writing Common Core Standards. Mini-lessons at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels help teachers weave storytelling into the fabric of today’s standards-based classroom and construct their own skillful literacy lessons. Reluctant and striving readers and writers, English language learners, and even more advanced storytellers will love the confidence they gain as they move from developing to delivering a variety of stories for a variety of audiences.

Teachers will love the many benefits of “performance literacy,” or teaching children how to write and perform stories:

• Develop literacy skills: language, vocabulary, comprehension, writing process, speaking, and listening along with performance skills and self-expression;
• Easily integrate learning across the content areas;
• Deepen the connection between home, school, and community; " Promote students’ creativity and activate their prior knowledge;
• Encourage respect and self-improvement as students learn to critique each other’s stories and performances in a non-threatening manner.

Performance Literacy through Storytelling comes complete with a story index, curriculum tie-ins, digital storytelling tips, and information for using the companion website with supplemental multimedia. An audio CD includes 70 minutes of stories and songs from the authors themselves, in addition to other well-known storytellers, performers, and educators: Karen Alexander, John Archambault, Heather Forest, Brenda Hollingsworth-Marley, David Plummer, and Allan Wolf. Don’t just teach literacy—perform it!