Imagine a world where knights save the countries, dragons fly high in the sky; kings rule the kingdoms, and pirates own the oceans.
Stories like these are fascinating and a great way to captivate kids’ attention and intrigue them in the world of storytelling. In a world where lines of myth and reality blur, imagination gets the wings, and creativity runs free to fuel the imagination, timeless stories are developed that will remain with mankind for centuries.
However, storytelling is not only about timeless classics and epic myths; it is an important skill that prepares kids for mastering grammar and verbal skills. It helps cultivate excellent vocabulary and communication skills and improves memory and learning abilities in developing kids.
To introduce the art of story retelling to little learners in an engaging and fun way, this post brings you a structured story-retelling lesson plan. The lesson plan highlights the importance of retelling and facilitates the development of the skills required to acquire those benefits. The lesson plan is suitable for use at home and classroom and effectively helps kids embark on their journey in storytelling.
Essential components of storytelling.
A good story is a mix of various ingredients that bring flavors and tastes to it. It involves certain components that structure the story and make it exciting. These components are the very basis of retelling and are important to teach kids story retelling. The components involve-
1. Setting
The setting represents where the narration is taking place. Here, you can explain the period the story is set in, time zone, seasons, day or night, location, etc. It will involve everything to help kids imagine the story and its setting.
For instance, a deep, dark forest filled with wild trees and bushes. Sounds of birds singing and animals roaring fill the midnight air from far away. A waterfall sounds from a distance, and the horses’ footsteps sound near it, indicating the presence of the king’s soldiers.
2. Characters
Characters are the main element of the story that keeps the story moving. Characters can be humans, animals, plants, insects, aliens, beasts, witches, princesses, etc. They have a major role in the story, and the narration generally revolves around the characters’ actions and motivations.
3. Theme
A good story has a central theme that signifies the story’s meaning and adds depth to it. A story could be happy, sad, mysterious, adventurous, family-oriented, friend-oriented, etc.
For instance, in the deep woods, a smith’s family lives. The family involves two kids, their mother, and a father. They used to live happily and in a cooperative environment.
4. Conflicts
Another major element of a good narration is conflict. It brings spice and action to the story and piques the listener’s interest in the narration. The plot’s characters are involved in the conflict and also deal with it. Narration involves vividly describing the conflict, how it affects the characters, which characters are involved, and how they plan to deal with it.
5. Conflict resolution
With conflict, a good story involves conflict resolution, too. It is generally the story’s climax, where the conflict is resolved, and the characters move towards their happy endings. Here, the story could involve what strategies characters used to resolve the conflict, such as fighting the beast, or the steps involved in doing so, such as the main character scaling the walls of the palace, fighting the beast soldiers, navigating the path toward the captured princess, fought the beast in his way, and so on.
6. Emotions
Emotions are like a salt to the story. Without it, the story will taste bland. There are various emotions that the narrator tries to arouse in the listeners, however, the story generally deals with one or two major emotions that form the basis of the story.
7. Sequence of events
For a story to make sense, a sequence of events should logically, accurately, and systematically represent which event occurred when, where, how, and why. It will help the listener remember the story, join the bits and pieces of the story, and understand it.
Story retelling lesson plan
Story retelling lesson plan is a wonderful tool to educate kids on the core of story retelling. This elaborative lesson plan aims to enhance the child’s reading comprehension, verbal abilities, and recall skills. It is a great tool, thoughtfully designed to cover multiple aspects of story retelling and teach kids the sequencing of events.
The lesson plan has some objectives, such as
- To learn about sequencing events of the story: beginning, middle, and the end.
- To memorize and recall the main event from the story.
The lesson plan begins with an introductory activity to facilitate story retelling in kids. Here, the educators will narrate a story to the kids that kids can easily relate to and understand. Further, encourage kids to actively listen to the story and ask them some specific questions regarding the story to assess their story’s understanding.
Once you are sure that kids understand the story, encourage them to retell it. Tell kids to narrate the story in a way as they are telling it to someone hearing it for the first time.
While telling and retelling the story, bring the kids’ attention to certain important components for gauging whether the kids are following up on the story or not.
- Main character (s) of the story.
- The setting of the story, I.e., the place and the time.
- The theme of the story
- The sequence of events in the story.
These components help assess the kid’s understanding level, their ability to recall the events, and narrate the story’s events in the way it was originally narrated.
Further, you can use prompts to bring the kid’s attention to certain parts of the story and highlight important events.
Strategy 1
This strategy helps ensure that kids follow the sequence of the story and recall the correct events in a sequence. Make a pair of kids, and let one child narrate the story’s setting; the other will introduce the characters, and then again, the first kid will highlight the theme, and so on.
It will help kids collaboratively narrate the story. You can further encourage kids to act out the emotional aspects of certain events to bring more life to the story and intrigue kids.
Strategy 2
Strategy 2 is a beautiful and creative way to encourage children to engage in story retelling. Help kids make a soft toy or sock puppet and again make a pair of two kids. Provide both kids with a puppet or toy and let them take chances narrating the story. Only this time, it has to be the puppet narrating the story, not the kids. In other words, let kids mimic and narrate the story in a way that it looks like puppets are narrating the story.
The art of storytelling and retelling is not limited to literature; it applies to almost every aspect of life. For instance, science and social studies. The lesson plan elaborates on how story retelling can assist in science experiments and social studies.
Lastly, story retelling has various benefits, which the lesson plan wonderfully works on and helps educators or parents teach those benefits to little learners. Some benefits are-
- It enhances kid’s recalling abilities
- It aids in improving their comprehension skills
- Builds on their sequencing and ordering skills
- It exposed them to voice modulation.
Additional prompts to encourage storytelling in kids
While teaching young kids the crux of story retelling, use a retelling checklist and ensure you don’t miss a thing. The lesson plan entails certain prompts to facilitate story retelling. Some additional prompts are-
- Who do you think is the main character of the story?
- Why do you think the character did the thing he did?
- If you were to be the main character, would you have reacted any differently to the conflict in the story?
- What emotions do you think the main character is experiencing right now?
- Can you think of a different ending to the story?
- If given a chance, which character would you like to play and why?
- What lesson do you think the author tries to give through the story?
- What theme is the story revolving around?
- Which supporting character is your favorite and why?
- Can you suggest another name for the story relevant to what you just narrated?
Summing up
From bedtime stories to classical mythology, stories have played a significant role in human life. It is a great way to make things easy and interesting and remember them for a long time. Kids engage in story-retelling activities and games from a young age, as these are a sound way to build imagination and empower kids in their academic journey.
With the help of the story-retelling lesson plan, kids will learn the essence of storytelling and how to narrate a captivating story to capture listeners’ attention. It will also improve kids’ recall abilities, memory, learning skills, sequential knowledge, communication skills, and reading comprehension.
I am Sehjal Goel, a psychology student, and a writer. I am currently pursuing my Masters’s from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Child psychology has always fascinated me and I have a deep interest in learning about disabilities in children and spreading awareness regarding the same. My other areas of interest are neuropsychology and cognitive psychology. Connect me on Linkedin