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| Flickr.com |
We, English teachers, are always looking for new ways of enhancing our classes. It does not matter if we are teaching kids, teenagers or adults; we are addicted to trying to make our lessons as enjoyable as possible for our students. This week, I was surfing the net and came across a very interesting blog with useful tips on storytelling techniques, and I will be writing about it in this post. Stick around!
The LessonStream Blog
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| https://lessonstream.com/blog/ |
First of all, it is important to say that you will not find a step-by-step guide on how to tell stories in the LessonStream blog. The purpose of this blog is to share some ideas as well as some experiences teachers had in their classrooms by using stories to engage their students in the lessons and make them to communicate in English.
The LessonStream Blog is aimed at teachers and educators. Its layout is very organized and appealing. The colors are not strong and the initial banner (students interacting in a classroom / library) matches the purpose of the blog. Also, it is very easy to navigate on it. With a single click on the buttons provided in the beginning of the page, you can access the posts and the topics you are interested in. The posts are categorized into eight different topics, such as story in ELT, the teacher as a storyteller, storytelling techniques, etc.
Overall, it is a very good blog for teachers who want to start to use stories to engage their students in their lessons. The posts really inspire you to think outside the box. I would say that the only drawback of this blog is that if you want to have access to more content on storytelling and the lesson plans, you will need to buy a special membership to join their community of teachers. I haven't done it yet, but I am planning to do it soon. The membership fee is not that expensive and the teaching resources advertised seem to be of good quality.
You can access The LessonStream blog here
Other useful resources
Preparing for storytelling activities
I've also found a very short video from the National Geographic Learning YouTube channel that presents some tips on how to prepare for storytelling. I found it very useful and I am sure it will give you some good insights into this subject. The video is aimed at teaching young learners, but the same techniques can be adapted to be used with teenagers and even adults. Here's the video:
Websites
That's all for today. I hope you find this content useful. See you on the next post!
Thanks for this great review Jordan! You've really got the 'genre' and made us (your audience) really comfortable and intrigued at the same time - well done! You've got the ball rolling on your blog and already have many of the important features (tags, acknowledgement of sources, attractive graphics, consistent style, embedded content....). If I could make one small suggestion - perhaps choose a colour for your paragraph subheadings that matches your background - I think that would look great.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Tilly.
DeleteGreat review, Jordan. Thanks for sharing the useful resources as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks Phyo!
DeleteHi Jordan, It's a really great introduction to "The LessonStream BLOG". I find it very interesting and enjoy reading your blog. But I have to say that I think the font is a little bit small, which can help us read more easily.
ReplyDeleteHey, Lu. Thanks for the comment. I will definitely take your reccommendation into consideration.
DeleteHi Jordan! Your blog is so amazing, really nice and beautiful layout! We've reviewed the same blog for LessonStream and I totally agree with your points. I've also watched some videos you put on Youtube and they are all interesting and easy to understand, I think other English learners will also find them useful and love these videos. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Yifan!
Delete