A Story for Thursday: The Rainbow Fish and The Big Blue Whale

I know this story!

From the response I received, most of the children in the reading programme know about rainbow fish. I chose to share this story yesterday because the children will be watching the rainbow fish theatre show this coming Saturday. It would be a good starter to their upcoming theatre experience.

The Rainbow Fish and The Big Blue Whale is actually a long story. There are many words (long sentences), which could be challenging for a storyteller. The challenge is not so much with the story but with sustaining the interest and engagement of the children listening to the story. The bigger the group, the more challenging it becomes. I had 25 children present yesterday. By choosing this story, I knew that I can expect some challenging behaviours such as restlessness and distracting other friends. With such an expectation, it is best to take some necessary adjustments in the way I tell the story.

Typically, when I tell a story with a book, I would take the story reading approach where I read the story word for word and track the words with my fingers at times. These help the children in word recognition. For this story I took on a different approach. I chose to learn the story well (tip: always read the story before telling or reading the story to others) in terms of the story line, plot, setting, and so on. By learning the story well, I can story tell it instead. Storytelling gives me greater flexibility to meet the needs of the audience. A storyteller has to be aware and responsive to the audience's body language and needs. If the children (or adults) look restless or overwhelmed, one can tune the drama up or down or make the story more interactive by getting the audience to participate in the story. The action taken by the story teller in response to the audience depends on the storyteller. It is a mix of initiative and intuition (this grows with experience and skill). These are the perks of storytelling, which works well for long stories. 

However, since I was in the reading programme and I wanted the children to have some form of word recognition too. Therefore, I took on a 50-50 approach. Story tell and story read. There were certain parts where I used story reading; the beginning and ending. And the middle part of the story was mostly storytelling. The result of the activity was successful. I faced little challenging behaviours, we (the children and I) discussed on conflict resolution after the story (the children had so much to share) and the children are excited for the theatre show! I am excited too J

P.S. I am having problems uploading images.