Teacher’s Corner

The activity below can be used for learning about story construction or life lessons as well as for connecting with students.  

Try this fun activity  – round robin storytelling. One student starts the story by saying a sentence or two and each student afterwards takes a turn to add another sentence or two one by one. If  young students are doing the activity, if needed, you can give them question prompts like “What might happen next?” “How did the characters feel?” “Was there an animal involved?”

Storytelling can be a helpful way to connect to your students.

• If there is something you want your students to learn from the story, weave it in when it is your turn. For example, have the main person in the story fail at something and not give up or do something very kind for someone else in the story.

• Listen for what the students add. It is a window to what they are thinking or feeling. Perhaps they will add aggressive actions, have characters be angry or afraid, add jokes to the story, or make their additions be about something they wish they could do. You can use what you learn to have interesting and important conversations with your students at other times not related to the story or to learn what topics might hold their attention for reading assignments, mathematics examples, or science applications.

Teachers, you can use this blog in classrooms. Here are two ideas about how.

1. For middle or high school parenting or child development courses:
   • Use the blog for discussion topics
   • Require students to research the topics and agree or disagree with what the blog is suggesting.
2. For all courses, especially English Language Arts:

• Use the blog for writing prompts for paragraphs, theme papers, journal entries, class starters, etc. Have students read the blog and respond to:
• Do you agree with what is being said about kids? Do kids really act, think or feel that way?
• Do you agree with what is being said about parents, grandparents, teachers and child caregivers? Do or should they act, think or feel that way?
• What would be your advice on this topic?
• What was left out of this article?
• If you were a parent, would you use any of this information? How?

Why can this blog be a useful teaching tool?

• Students that see connections between their coursework and their lives do better in school.
• Most students will either be parents one day or have children in their lives that they care about, so the topical information can help them build their knowledge about children and parenting and develop a positive image of the type of parenting they want to do.
• The new core literacy standards adopted by most states call for frequent writing in all courses.
• Newly developed end-of-course assessments to be used by many states will require that students demonstrate that they can think critically. These prompts help students practice critical thinking.
• Newly developed end-of-course assessments to be used by many states will require that students demonstrate that they can analyze what they read. These prompts help students practice analysis.