Lessons & Lesson Plans First, you should DO some of the workshops on this site! Then you can teach them yourself. If you share these with anyone, please cite this website as your source. Here are the workshops that you can first DO and then TEACH. These workshops work best if you have at least one partner; it is not very effective to merely think about them or do them hypothetically. Would a pianist succeed by only practicing a piece hypothetically? (The answer is 'no', by the way). You need to DO these, out loud and full of enthusiasm and energy! Once you've been through them, you will be prepared to teach them. For these, you will have to come up with your own specific lesson objectives and assessment strategies, but the workshops are pretty clear on these elements as well, even if not stated overtly. These are probably best taught in this order: An Organic Approach to Storytelling? Storytelling Defaults: Things to Do Unless You Have a Good Reason Not To The Storytelling Process Storytelling Skills: The Basics (an overview) Visualization: The Most Important Storytelling Skill Story Bones: Story Structure You Don't Know Jack: Building Storytelling Suspense Using Limits Building Suspense in Storytelling Being Creative with Language in Storytelling Using Your BODY in Storytelling Gestures with a Purpose in Storytelling Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth The Ages of Storytelling (article) Grading Rubrics for Storytellers Other Links Here are a few websites with some very nice lesson plans and other lesson materials. Take a look! StoryArts' Lesson Plans & Activities: Professional storyteller Heather Forest's wonderful site has lots of great things—including lesson plans. Handbook for Storytellers: a small site, but with some good information. Storytelling Power: A fun site featuring lots of articles and ideas for storytelling. Tim Sheppard always has great things going on over at his site! Mr. Sheppard also has a wonderful page, featuring articles about storytelling in education. Aaron Shepard has some great resources for teachers, too. He also has information about readers theatre and other oral language arts. Barry McWilliam's "Eldrbarry's" storytelling page. A fun site with some fine information about storytelling and storytelling in the classroom. The Story Connection: Dianne de Las Casas's lovely site containing lots of great resources for teachers. Telling Tales: Bob Wilkin's site that features storytelling activities for children and much more. Activities for Teaching Appalachian Folktales...: a very nice compendium of activities that can be used in the classroom or at home. YouthLearn.org: a very informative site, especially when it comes to organizing and understanding stories. Curriculum Suggestions for Rick's Books. Rick Walton is an author of children's books. The activities his site contains, however, go well beyond his own books and into folklore and storytelling. Jay O'Callahan's Tips for the Teller. O'Callahan is one of our finest storytellers. This site has some great material. ProTeacher has some wonderful links to storytelling in the classroom. PIZZAZ is a marvelous site with lots of storytelling ideas. It is primarily intended for English as a Second Langauge students and teachers, but I've found their ideas are very useful for anyone. The Advocacy Committee of the National Storytelling Network has gatherered some of the finest articles on storytelling I've seen. Storyteller David James has compiled many interesting and useful resources for teachers. Bill Wood is a storyteller who has written a very engaging and thoughtful article about storytelling. The Crick Crack Club is an organization devoted to helping others through storytelling. They have a unique approach and some excellent material on the importance of storytelling. Story-Lovers is a fine website wtih lots of information about storytelling, including important articles and other resources.