A Practical Guide to Using Storyline Across the Curriculum

Inspiring Learning with Passion

Peter Tarrant

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138483163
• eBook ISBN: 9781351055642
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

A Practical Guide to Using Storyline Across the Curriculum provides a comprehensive introduction to the Storyline approach to teaching and learning – an approach that embraces and encourages children's passion for learning. Putting children at the centre of learning, the book explores how educators and teachers can harness pupils' innate appetite for stories to make interdisciplinary teaching and learning enjoyable and successful.

Demonstrating how teachers can easily use the Storyline approach within the curriculum, this book offers a step-by-step introduction to learning developed through the use of narrative. Key topics explained include:

• planning individual lessons and sequences of lessons;
• guidance on planning and progress;
• assessment and evaluation of learning;
• links with visible learning and growth mindset approaches.

Filled with detailed examples of storylines that have been tried and tested in the classroom, A Practical Guide to Using Storyline Across the Curriculum offers new and experienced teachers an accessible guide to the Storyline approach, with ready-to-use ideas to enable, inspire and support learners.

Part I

The theory, philosophy and approach explained

Introduction

Learning with passion

Learning with passion. This part of the title of this book may have attracted you because that’s what you feel about learning and teaching.

Sometimes it is reassuring to read that you are not alone in your views, values and beliefs.

Whether you are a teacher or not, you probably already know the buzz to be had from enabling, inspiring and supporting learners who are excited to learn. This passion for learning is priceless and perhaps our role as educators is to somehow kindle that spark, feed that fire and support that passion until it enables the learner to flourish. Clearly not everyone will be that performer, that joker or tale teller that is loved by all children and who seems to inspire passion effortlessly.

However, we can take comfort in the fact that we have all experienced a wide range of personalities of different teachers in different settings. They were all different but each had the capacity to light that fuse of passion for us. What these people had in common, perhaps, was a love of learning itself and the confidence and enthusiasm to pass that on to us.

This book explores how a Storyline approach might equip the teacher or leader to share and generate that passion for learning. The approach is steeped in curiosity and community.

It provides inspiration, consternation and jubilation, as a problem is solved or a person in need is rescued. The Storyline approach uses a narrative as a framework that provides a clear plan for learning together with the security that the learners can have ownership of their own learning.

Regardless of our own teaching experience and abilities we will always struggle if the learner is unwilling to co-operate. Indeed, many teachers thrive on the response of the pupils in order to properly express themselves in the classroom. For some this relationship is like that of the actor live on stage, reaching out to their audience and then feeding off the reaction. In teaching this might manifest itself as the things that the teacher says and does to motivate, inspire and intrigue the learners in their care. There is a kind of magic when the relationship is strong and the learners ‘believe’ in the teacher. This sense of trust is what provides the right climate for learning to flourish.

Taking a narrative approach to teaching and learning enables those participating to experience an emotional relationship with the learning. Having the pupils ‘become’ families existing in the midst of World War II (WWII) means that they have a memorable experience – an experience in which they actually care about the events and scenarios. It means that they have that vital ingredient for independent learning: the gift of curiosity.

In my experience, learners involved in this approach are generally keen and passionate about their characters or creations. They want to have ‘another episode,’ another chapter of a story where they find out more and more of the puzzle. One where they can have an influence or impact on what unravels.

Of course, much depends on trust, relationships and the teachers’ ability to ‘weave the magic spell.’ The learners need to believe in the project – to willingly suspend their disbelief sufficiently to play their part in the fiction. When they come into the classroom and see the crashed rocket with a letter from the alien, they know that this is a game of pretend, yet they readily embrace the fantasy and are desperate to carry out the research on behalf of their new alien friend. They will go away and learn all about the Earth or the planets – motivated by the desire to ‘play the game.’ This is where the passion and enthusiasm comes from. It thrives on a sense of community and joint enterprise. The learners want to support and help the (fictional) character.

For the teacher this provides many opportunities for learning ‘about’ (people, places, things) and puts the learning ‘in a context’ (engaging in a fantasy where we all accept that we can only do certain things because of the time and place where the story takes place – no, we can’t use our smartphones because this is World War II!).

It is such a powerful experience when this learning with passion happens. It is not just the enthusiasm of the teacher. It is the desire in the learners to find out, to share and to communicate. Pupils encourage each other and the collaborative group effort in turn develops and builds an ethos of enquiry and support, and a community of learners.

When we think back to things we have learned ourselves it is often those experiences that go together with a sense of adventure, a sense of community and of joint endeavour that we remember best. Learning in and through experience must be one of the most enjoyable, rewarding and memorable ways to learn – hence the current emphasis in education on learning through ‘play,’ and on outdoor learning. What this book attempts to do is to give teachers the scope to take their pupils to places, times and experiences that would be impossible in real life – but extremely accessible through the shared narrative of a storyline.

Learning with passion is something to feel very passionate about!

1 What is Storyline?

This book is all about the Storyline approach to teaching and learning. It is a pedagogy and a methodology that puts the child at the centre of learning. It looks to the child to stimulate and follow their passion and interest to learn. It acknowledges what the child already knows, and treasures their curiosity to find out more.

At first sight you might ask, “Where is there the freedom to do all of this in a climate with an already overcrowded curriculum and so many demands for assessment and attainment?”

This book hopes to convince you that not only is it possible to enjoy Storyline and serve these different ‘masters,’ but that it will be an extremely effective, and most of all fun, way to do it.

So what is Storyline?

Human beings are hard-wired to make connections, to look for patterns and to construct a narrative in order to make sense of the world and their surroundings.

For example, look at these words then close your eyes and think about them:

The chances are that you linked some of these together and began to construct a narrative – something like this:

The boat sank and the man swam to the island for safety. Later he found treasure.

The point is, we are conditioned to try to make sense of things. Given even a random mix of information, words or stimuli, our brains are programmed to look for patterns and connections. A primal form of this is the construction of a narrative. Through stories we can make sense of the world. We can make information relatable and see how it fits our own schemas and experiences.

The more relatable the story the more memorable it will be. If we invest some feelings and emotions into the story it will also help our memory and our understanding.

When you think about learning you often recall a person or emotion that is connected: perhaps your favourite teacher, or some learning experiences that you recall as being fun.

Storyline taps into this innate desire for a narrative. It encourages participants to construct a narrative and adopt ownership. It is connected with emotions: the most common adjectives used by participants to describe the experience are words like enthusiastic, passionate, motivated, engrossed and, of course, fun.

A classroom full of children engaged in a storyline is one where there is much talk, laughter and collaboration and the buzz of a shared adventure.

Storyline comes in many forms but one of the most common structures involves a story with a family at the heart of the narrative.

The learners create their own families and begin, right from the start, to identify with one or two of the characters. Although the learners create and develop these characters it is within the parameters laid down by the teacher, i.e. the teacher will decide where and when the family exists, they will decide on what happens to them. Meanwhile the learners will decide what the characters are like and how they will react to the events that unfold as revealed by the teacher.

To be consistent with this notion of the narrative, the following passage presents the narrative of a typical storyline which is based on a template (see Chapter 5) called the Street.

Most storylines are based on a series of ‘episodes.’

1 Context

2 Families

3 Homes

4 Everyday life

5 An incident

6 Response

7 Celebration

8 Plenary

Below we can look at an example of how this might look in the classroom.

1 Context

Teacher:

“Today we are going to begin our topic and so the first thing we are going to do is to imagine we have travelled in a time machine. We have travelled back in time to a place up in the Scottish Highlands. We have travelled a long time back, over 150 years back in time.”

2 Families

Teacher:

“What do you think people looked like then? What did they wear? What did they do for work and leisure? If you don’t know, how could we find out?”

“In your groups [of 4–6 pupils] you are going to be a family in this time and place long ago. Have a chat about who you are going to be. Each person must be a member of the family. Each family group will need a family or clan name. Decide who you are and what you are like, and think about what kind of person you are – who do you get on with? Who don’t you get on with? What are you good at, and so on.”

After five or six minutes:

Teacher:

“Now we are going to make our characters. You will be given simple templates to draw around. You can choose male, female or child. You can then use the scrap materials to ‘dress’ the characters. Be creative, use as much detail as you can.

“Once your character is ready we will put each family member on to a family group portrait. The portraits will be hung on our display and then each person will be introduced to the class.”

Once this is done, the pupils will have the opportunity to write a biography of their character. This can be a description, an annotated picture, a fact file or any other form of presentation with which the class are familiar.

The script above is taken from a Storyline topic called ‘Long Ago in Scotland,’ which I worked on many years ago with Sallie Harkness. She has worked on Storyline for almost 50 years with primary, high school and further education pupils, as well as adult learners in education, industry and services like the NHS and the police.

3 Homes

It is important to think through how these will be displayed. In this script the homes would be pinned up on a frieze. On other occasions they could be made from cereal boxes to create a 3D street. Sometimes they could be done with shoeboxes to create a 3D model.

The main thing to think about is the relative size of each home. To this end it is important to give approximate dimensions – or templates – to ensure that each home is in proportion to those around it.

The script would continue with the pupils developing ‘homes’ for their families.

In the classroom there would be a display that grows with the topic. At first it would have the families and perhaps a biography or fact file for each character. Then the homes would be added. After that the pupils can really take...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• A Practical Guide to Using Storyline Across the Curriculum
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: The Theory, Philosophy and Approach Explained
• Part II: Four Approaches to Planning a Storyline
• Part III: Assessment and Planning Approaches
• Part IV: Appendices – Practitioner Examples, Plans, Case Studies and Templates
• Index