When we focus merely on how we are doing the method or, worse, on just recreating the story script itself in class, perhaps we miss the entire point of storytelling.
In my view, the real point of this work is not to focus on the method or the materials or something in some curriculum document that we are trying to teach. Instead, it is to convey to our students a sense of wonder and awe that such a thing could have ever happened, that such characters really have existed and done those things. This aligns with the research about how people learn languages, by focusing on meaning and not on form.
We accomplish the shift to meaning via our voice, its timbre and tonality. We use our voice to ask questions about the story in a way that conveys marvel and wonder. Think of reading a bedtime story to a child. Do stories that way. Don’t discuss such magical ideas in a boring way, or in a way that reveals your deep need to be seen as funny and creative by the kids.
Children learn languages because of the way we say things, because of the meaning we put into what we are saying. We inflect, we express surprise, we learn to dance with our students using our voices. Doing this makes it easy for them to keep their focus on what is happening. We are so proud of them, that they are helping us understand all those story details with their cute answers, that they know such bizarre things, things that we don’t even know about the story!
If we do those things, our students will need to tell us more details. We of course welcome their ideas and try to remember to proudly point to the student who suggested a certain idea (“The glasses were on top of the car!”) whenever we say it during a recycling session or during a retell.
Remembering to acknowledge the creator of a certain fact in a story is hard to do, but it does a lot to build great relationships with the kids, since they are so rarely acknowledged by their teachers in their other classes and in life in general. We welcome our students’ suggestions in class for what they are – gifts from heaven.