Teaching as Storytelling and Drama: Teaching Stories for the World Core Curriculum
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“It is the children themselves who have taught us that the sense of fantasy is a vital key to learning. … It was after writing the curriculum into story form and becoming storytellers that we finally had the children’s full attention in our classes. Furthermore, teaching as storytelling has proven effective for children with different learning modes and intelligences. Even children who are not auditory learners will pay attention to and comprehend a good story, as will young scientists and inventors. They listen intently to stories of young explorers going on exciting journeys, adventurers discovering new domains, or heroes pitting themselves against obstacles as they pursue noble quests. A plethora of facts and examples of virtues ride easily together on the current of the storyline and into receptive minds and hearts. We can feed children’s souls by means of a sense of fantasy while offering them knowledge of their world.”  –From Teaching as Storytelling and Drama: Teaching Stories for the World Core Curriculum by Vicki Johnston

Teaching as Storytelling and Drama
Stories and plays that connect with the child on the levels of knowledge and wisdom simultaneously. The reason for teaching this way is that children universally love to listen to stories and dramatize them. The stories cover all areas of the curriculum including botany, zoology, Earth science, biology, meteorology, the history of the human family, American history, and an in depth cultural study each year. Each of these stories includes a synthesis of the various sciences are told in terms of the mutually sustaining relationship between the whole and its parts. Right now we are in the final stages of editing the past eight years of story, story/skit and play writing. We are hoping to complete this project by the first of July.

The Teacher Guidebook stresses the importance of the teaching stories being an aspect of a holistic, nurturing environment. Meaningful experience and imagination share a reciprocal and child-friendly relationship. Children's love of both indicates that this is nature's design for optimal growth. See a sample year curriculum (.pdf file) of Teaching Stories from the Teacher Guidebook.

Let us conduct a Teaching as Storytelling Workshop at your location or ours.

Examples of Form Coax Drawings for the Teaching Stories
 ©2004 Robert Muller Center for Living Ethics

From the Story of the Earth Geological Processes & Cycles	From a History of the United States: Boston Tea Party	Examples of Form Coax Drawing	From Exploring the Black Land Prairie

TESTIMONIAL

"We are blessed to have amongst us such an enlightened teacher. She (Vicki Johnston) offers us gifts for greater understanding through teaching as storytelling.

My children and I have have had the opportunity to utilize these teaching stories as a conduit between adult and child to venture together into the rich culture of imagination and exploration. May we all share in the opportunity to discover reality through the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit that these teaching stories evoke.

Embedded in all the teaching stories, Vicki has truly honored humanity's capacity to create, invent, reflect, dream, and evolve for a higher purpose.

Many times my children have related something they have learned from the teaching stories to current situations. This is true measure of cognitive understanding. This is learning as it should be... in partnership with our children, building a new culture for learning through the synergy of art, imagination, and play.

As a group, or as a homeschooling mom, these stories can be wonderful springboards to shared learning journeys!" -Rachel Lueke, co-learner and mother of two children
 

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Download a Free Sample
 The Human Family, A History Of Ideas II
Neolithic Thru Bronze Age, Introduction
(13 pages, .pdf file)

Available Now:
Teaching as Storytelling and Drama: Teacher Guidebook
Introduction to the teaching stories includes our philosophy, sample curricula, and teaching strategies.
View the Table of Contents (.pdf file)

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Individual Teaching Stories
See a List and prices of all Teaching Stories (.pdf file)
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