The Power of Storytelling

     There are many times that we have read and shared stories with our students.  When we tell a story we see their eyes open and their attention to us.  It is amazing how children learn thorough stories and tales.   Stories can be read in any subject even in math.  Students will make connections of the teaching material and the story and that is when learning really happens.  But stories are not related only in teaching subjects but also in real life morals.  All folk tales leave children with the moral of the story that has taught them how to behave, to think, to love etc.  

      According to the article from this week's resources, The Science of Storytelling,  story telling is really a science.  It really impressed me the fact that according to the information from the article, when we present a subject with a power point presentation the mind only decodes words into meaning where with a story all the senses participate to form a mental experience that we can remember for sure.  

      I am glad that this past summer took a class about children's literature as an elective fro my certification in Elementary Education.  I learned so much about stories and folk tales and how to read them to children, at what pace, as well as, the proper material for each age or ethnic group with respect to diversity.  I learned from that class that students from a certain culture become associated with the story and become more comfortable in the classroom setting, they feel welcomes and their minds are open to receive knowledge.  In the meantime other students create pictures in their minds of that culture and relate it with their own.  As you see the benefits are great.  

    As a teacher in Greek school I have a great variety of stories to choose.  The best of them were Aesop's myths that kids loved so much.  Always in the end of the story there were thinking of what the moral was and how to become better people. Soon after the story we played a small play related to the story and children had to repeat certain expression in Greek from the myth.  they were laughing so hard and they created new experiences that they will always remember.