Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful way to help immerse students in their first or second language.  It's also a great way to assess their progress in language proficiency.  Last year many of our teachers experimented with an approach that used the 5 point narrative retelling rubric from the Pre-LAS/LAS-Links exams throughout the year.  Several times a year the teachers chose a well known story (one they'd previously read several times in their classroom) and color copied several pictures that represent key plot events.  They then asked the students to use the pictures to tell them the book's story.  They then transcribed the story (as you do in the official test administration) and assigned them a rubric score based on their retelling.

This also reminded teachers that oral storytelling was something children needed lots of opportunities to engage in and receive support and feedback around throughout the year.  One great idea from a Spanish immersion preschool I visited a year or so ago: the teacher had a large train posted on the wall with 4 or 5 carriages.  This "story train" had a picture posted in each carriage from a favorite story they'd read together the week before.  Children had multiple opportunities to retell the story using these pictures as a guide (again, color copies of key plot points).  This provided opportunities for instruction and informal assessment around each student's use of a number of language structures, such as: verb tense & agreement (especially in the preterite), using adverbs & adjectives to describe and elaborate, using sequential "markers" (first, next, later, then, finally, etc), vocabulary depth & complexity--particularly with verbs & nouns, sense of story beginning, middle, end...etc.

By creating some sort of checklist or rubric, you can very easily track small degrees of progress in your students' oral language proficiency.  You could also use it when they tell oral stories from their own life--basically any time they're retelling anything!  You can, of course, use other language interactions beyond storytelling; this just seemed like good place to at least begin and experiment with the idea.  I recommend you use the oral retelling rubric from your end of year language proficiency exam (like the LAS, Woodcock-Muñoz, etck) as a place to start and then break language objectives down from there.

Here are a few resources I found online that could give you some things to think about as you engage students in lots of storytelling for language acquisition.  Be aware, however, that most storytelling/retelling rubrics focus only on the content, delivery, and story structure; they don't typically focus on the actual language structures second language learners should be using to tell the stories.  That's why I liked using our LAS rubric so much--it centers on using retelling as a way to develop and assess second language acquisition and really helps focus on specific language structures.  Regardless, here are some resources that might help you identify key language objectives to teach and assess in the context of storytelling:


Rubrics from StoryArts.com
Julie's Rubrics for Retelling
          Fiction Retelling Rubric
          Nonfiction Retelling Rubric
          Sequencing Rubric
          Summarizing Rubric
Oral Language Rubric
Fairfax County PALS Rubrics
Rubric Ideas & Rubric Generator
Oral Language Checklist for ELLs