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Using Storytelling in the Classroom
Here you will find eight stories created especially to create learning and engagement around the UN sustainable goals and the European Union as an active player to create a sustainable development.
The stories are suitable for working with various aspects of UN’s global goals no. 3, 4 and 10 with a particular focus on well-being, cooperation and inclusion. Some of the stories also touch upon issues related to other SDGs or the collaboration between countries in the EU.
Each story has been tagged with some of the topics that we think the story invites to talk about. These tags are only for you as a teacher to get a quick overview and an idea of how to use the stories in your teaching. Revealing them to pupils in advance is often fatal, so we do not recommend that you do that. It can have a negative influence on both their spontaneous listening and experience with the story, as well astheir motivation and success in including their own experiences and in using playful activities to arrive at the perceptions each story is a possible entry point to.
In the classroom – or elsewhere – you can use the stories in many different ways.
For instrance:
The stories are designed for different age groups and the videos are available in two versions; with and without endings. This makes it possible to work with the stories in many different ways.
For instance:
You can listen to the story together and then go into groups to imagine the endings.
You can listen to the entire story and go into groups and have a debate using the reflection cards for pupils.
Remember that you find tips and guidance on how you, as a teacher, can work with telling stories yourself. You can also use many of these tips to guide your pupils when they start telling stories themselves.
The playing activities on the PLACES Playful Activity cards called “STORY BONES” suit all the stories. The same do activities on the cards “Playful Story Building”, “Stories into Movement”, “Storytelling Theatre” and “Playing with Variations of a Story”.
Cards that fit particularly well with certain stories are mentioned next to the individual stories
Enjoy!
Only once a year do they come. The dragons. And they stay only one night in the caves on top of the mountain. Then it’s time for the dragon dancer test.
You can only succeed if you get hold of a dragon scale, so throughout the year pupils in the two villages at the foot of the mountain have been practicing the art of net and knife. But in the two cities they prepare the dragon dancer test in completely different ways …
We think that this story lends itself particularly well to working with the PLACES Playful activity card; “Story Bones – Dragon dancers” and the Wild Card; “Be The Teacher”.
The sun shines on an ordinary small town. You know, the kind of town where most people know each other, but many keep to themselves. But on this day, a strange van stops in the town park, and a small family comes out with a very special stone …
This story is a variation of a traditional folk tale that can be found in different versions throughout Europe. The stranger or strangers coming to town, are in some stories a group as is the case in this version, but in other stories it is a lone monk, soldier or vagabond. In Northern Europe, the stone is most often a nail, while in other countries it can be completely different things. But we share the tradition of the basic story.
If you want to explore this story with your pupils, we think that for example the PLACES Playful activity cards “Story Bones – Stone soup” and “Playing with Variations of a Story” work particularly well.
Bianca and Gregor never agree on anything. And to collaborate? Forget it! But on the class school trip, something very strange happens …
If you want to explore this story with your pupils, we think that for example the PLACES Playful activity wild card “Walk in my Shoes” and the activity card “Playful Story Building” work particularly well.
14-year-old Michael is called ‘Stunner’ because he ‘stuns’ his classmates. He hits them very hard on their shoulders. In a way, it has become part of his role in the class. And he plays it well. But one day, by mistake, he has to be a substitute in the 2nd grade, and there is a conflict between 2 younger boys in the classroom. What to do? Should he stun them?
If you want to explore this story with your pupils, we think that for example the PLACES Playful activity card “Story Bones – Stunner” and the Wild Card “Be the Teacher” work particularly well.
“Max’s life”. That was the name of Max’s Instagram profile. And everything on the profile looked super nice and expensive. It was all very well arranged, edited and “filtered”. Because it is of maximum importance how life looks from the outside. Isn’t that true….?
If you want to explore this story with your pupils, we think that for example the PLACES Playful activity card “Messy Monday” works particularly well.
Do you know that “noisy silence” that can descend when the teacher has asked a question out in the open? When there isn’t even the sound of fabric against fabric as a sign of pupils raising their hands? Tops raised her hand. There were signs of relief from all the others. Yes! Way to go, Tops! But her answer is wrong …
If you want to explore this story with your pupils, we think that for example the PLACES Playful activity card “The Olympics of Mistakes” works particularly well.
You know the classic image of a person having a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other? Which one should we listen to and believe? One day Anna wakes up and can see creatures on her own shoulders. But they are not only caricatures of good and evil; they are miniature versions of her parents, and other people who allow themselves to have an opinion about who she is and what she does.
If you want to explore this story with your pupils, we think that for example the PLACES Playful activity card “Playful Story Building” and the wild card “Walk in My Shoes” work particularly well.
The summer holidays have just started and Anna and the others from school are bathing at the bathing place by the river. But later her skin starts to itch. She decides to go up the river to see if she can find out why.
If you want to explore this story with your pupils, we think that for example the PLACES Playful activity wild card XXX, works particularly well.
In addition, we think that the story can lead to a conversation about collaboration across borders, for example inspired by the PLACES info card: EU INTEGRATION.