Meeting Standards
Curriculum Standards
The multicultural folktales presented by Storytelling Arts contain lessons and elements that can be expanded into teaching opportunities in many areas of the curriculum, from language arts to social studies, science, math, fine arts, foreign languages, even PE! Click on the following tales for examples of how they can be used in your classroom.
21st Century Standards
The 21st Century Standards expect teachers to become the models for their student’s learning. A Storytelling Arts program at your school can enhance:
Learning & Innovative Skills
· Communication Skills
· Social / Cross Cultural Skills
· Global Awareness Skills
Specifically, the skills focus on:
· Creativity in thinking and devising collaborative situations
· Critical thinking
· Communicating Clearly
· Collaboration
· Flexibility
· Adaptability
· Self-direction (even in collaboration)
Meeting 21st Century Standards
The 21st century skills are not separate skills to be added to your classroom. The skills are to be the underlying atmosphere in which all learning takes place. Listening to and discussing stories is the perfect method for introducing and exercising these practices.
· We make sense of the world through our stories and our discussion
of them. Successful discussion relies on all of the 21st century skills
listed above. Inquiry through discussion is a social, collaborative act.
· Stories provide a springboard for this collaborative talk between students
and between students and adults.
· Old stories are infused with ethical and moral issues that form the basis
for deep discussion in the classroom.
· Creative work with the stories is a way of making sense of the stories
and our lives in the world.
· All learning proceeds from questions formulated through this collaborative
inquiry.
· In order to critically one must first formulate a question or an issue. It must
be clear, accurate and precise. Ideally, the discussion will include breadth
and depth of thought. See www.criticalthinking.org for articles, discussion
and lesson plans on critical thinking.