Spin the Yarn

That the beginning of the podcast that I was assigned to listen to for class began with a discussion of conspiracy theories as the lead into a discussion about fake news felt like serendipity to me. Over the past several months, I have been listening to a podcast called Conspiracy! The Show , which is hosted by two comedians who take a conspiracy theory and present the alleged proof both for and against the theory. On several occasions, one of the hosts, Adam Tod Brown (2017-Present), has made the observation that the same level of scrutiny is not often applied to the people who debunk conspiracy theories, as it is to the people who present them. The validity of that point might be considered questionable by the metrics laid out by The Liturgists Podcast host Science Mike (2014-Present), in the episode “Fake News and Media Literacy,” as I have referenced it without a direct citation. I feel like one of the main points that Science Mike was trying to make in that episode though, was th...

This week, we have been looking at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards. Briefly, the AASL Standards cover three areas: Learners, the School Library, and the School Librarian. The standards for each are broken down into the same six key areas: Inquire, Include, Collaborate, Curate, Explore, and Engage. Each of those areas is further broken down into four domains: Think, Create, Share, and Grow (AASL, 2018a). The ISTE Standards seek to create, “high-impact, sustainable, scalable and equitable learning experiences for all learners,” through the use of technology (“The ISTE Standards,” n.d., para. 1). The ISTE Standards have five sections (Students, Educators, Education Leaders, Coaches, and ISTE Computational Thinking Competencies), but the two that I am going to be focusing on are Students and Educators. The standards for Students are: Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovat...

In the chapter, “Storytelling in Libraries and Schools in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland,” from “Part II” of the book Storytelling: Art and Technique , Patrick Ryan writes about the time that he ran storytelling workshops for young offenders in prison. During these workshops, what he discovered was that, “The boys were particularly interested in ghost stories, and we explored the fact that, more than content, how a story is told makes it scary” (Ryan, 2010, p. 260). While reading this section of the chapter, I was at first reminded of how much I used to enjoy ghost stories when I was in elementary school. It began when I was in third or fourth grade, and my parents had bought me the book The Scariest Stories You’ve Ever Heard, Part II , from the Scholastic Book Fair. I read it a couple of times and began to retell the stories to my friends. During sleepovers, we would sit in a circle and tell ghost stories in the dark, and it was always fun to hear a new one that you co...

Something that spoke to me as I was reading through chapter 11 of Ellin Greene and Janice M. Del Negro’s (2010) Storytelling: Art and Technique , titled “Program Planning,” was just how important being flexible is as a storyteller. The first sentence of the chapter states that, “A successful storytelling program requires careful planning, flexibility, and creativity” (p. 213). Planning and creativity are necessary for creating the program, but I feel like flexibility is what allows you to carry it out despite any obstacles that may present themselves. Being flexible and knowing how to adjust your plan is what keeps it from getting derailed when met with an unexpected challenge. As Greene and Del Negro (2010) write, “The public library storyteller does not always know who will be at the story program and therefore must be prepared to make changes” (p. 214). When thinking about flexibility and planning, I was reminded of a course that I took last spring, EDEX 581: Teaching Reading in t...

I recently completed my third storytelling experience, which involved the use of props and/or manipulatives, and I would like to take this time to reflect on that experience from beginning to end. Below, you will find my recording of that experience. The first thing that I had to do to complete this experience was to figure out what story I would be telling and what kinds of props and manipulatives I would use. When thinking of which story to use, the story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly! , was one that immediately came to mind. The printing of the story that I used was by Lucille Colandro with illustrations by Jared Lee. I remember being read that story in elementary school and enjoying it. The old lady’s strange behavior that is both mysterious and gross, appealed to me as a child. I looked at a copy of the book on the website Open Library, and I thought that it would work well for my first experience telling a story with props because the story is told from one point of v...

  Chapter 10 of Ellin Greene and Janice M. Del Negro’s (2010) Storytelling: Art and Technique , titled “Children and Young Adults as Storytellers,” featured many different programs that taught storytelling to children and young adults. In the section about Anne Shimojima’s storytelling activities, one of the activities that stood out to me was when Shimojima would take several different folktales, rewrite them, and have the children make their own additions to the story (p. 195). In chapter 4, folktales are described as traditional tales that, “have the essentials of a good short story: terseness, simplicity, and vigor” (p. 65). These traits are what make them good for beginner storytellers to learn, but I think that by allowing children to personalize them, it can create a greater connection between the child and the story they are telling because they have been allowed to add something of themselves to the story. Anne Shimojima has been a storyteller for a long time and she has s...

Having just completed my first storytelling experience, I am going to run through my process from beginning to end. Below is the video of the experience. The first step was selecting the story. I wanted a story that I thought would be humorous and fun. I have always enjoyed Jon Scieszka's fractured fairy tales because I like the way that they subvert what you think you know about well-known stories and show you them from a new perspective. I chose The Frog Prince, Continued because of his first three books, it was the one that I was the least acquainted with, having only been read it once in elementary school. I wanted the story that I was going to tell to be fresh to me, since I knew I was going to be reading it man Another reason for choosing The Frog Prince, Continued was because of the number of characters in the story. I knew that I wanted to do different voices for each character and this story has only six characters, which I thought would be a manageable number to keep tra...