Selection Criteria for Stories

Running head: STORYTELLING IN CLASS1
Storytelling in Class
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Storytelling in Class
1. Introduction
Telling a story is often attention-grabbing. For as long as mankind has existed, stories have shaped imagination, develop a new conscious and entertained. The application of stories is almost universal to every possible human activity. This is attributed, in part, to a story’s ability to deliver a message in an entertaining way and, in part, due to a story’s ability to endure long after delivery. Unsurprisingly, stories are used for learning purposes in and out of class (McNett,
2016). For decades, storytelling has been adopted as an effective learning method having mutiple benefits. For one, stories enrich imagination in numerous ways one most important of which is enhancing cognitive skills to appreciate, intellectually and emotionally, embedded messages in a given story. In class, stories are selected for different learning purposes and based on specific criteria. For current purposes six selection criteria are of main interest: age appropriateness, style, values, sensory/visual images, structure, and delivery mode. To put matters into context, each criteria is briefly discussed, a story is selected for each story category and q numbered list is created showing steps instructors usually follow to present stories to children in class.
2. Stories: Six Selection Criteria
The six selection criteria of stories are, as mentioned: (i) age appropriateness, (ii) style,
* values, (iv) sensory/visual images, (v) structure, and (vi) delivery mode. The following is a brief description of each.
* Age Appropriateness. Intuitively, stories should be selected such as to consider for age requirements for each student. The range of stories an instructor could choose from, based on age appropriateness, is vast. Therefore, selecting a story based on age should be informed not only by
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age considerations (e.g. cognitive and development skills) but also, probably more importantly, a young learner’s acceptability and receptivity of a given story. That is, whilst a story might be, in concept, age appropriate, a story could be “boring,” “too long,” or “irrelevant” (i.e. unrelated to course content). That is why, selecting a story for children in, or out of, class should be informed by wider considerations of storytelling.
* Style. The “style” refers to unique literary methods a storyteller uses in a given story. Typically, writers are differentiated by writing styles and methods applied to different pieces. This cannot be more applicable to stories. By definition, stories inspire, or not, a reader or a listener by sparking imagination using literary devices such as metaphors, diction, flashbacks, motifs and many more. These literary devices are, obviously, used differently by and are characteristic of each writer. Therefore, if an instructor wants to deliver a specific message to students or wishes to convey a certain sense of events, characters or places, style is what she should look for.
* Values. For long learners, values are cri...