Telling stories to children
I was at a school in India and when they heard I was a storyteller they asked me to speak at their morning assembly for thirty minutes. The sixty children ranged in age from four to twelve and were from many different ethnic backgrounds but studying in English.
I chose a short story of about ten verses and told it three times. The first time, I told the story with a brief introduction. The second time, I did a lead-through where the children helped me fill in the blanks. The third time, I divided the children in pairs to tell the story to each other. I organised the pairs so that older children helped with younger children. This has the added benefit of teaching children to help each other and work together.
Then I asked for six volunteers who would read out one question each.
The questions were led from the front and I gave them four rules to follow:
- everyone must answer every question
- every answer must be different
- the answers must come from the story and the introduction only
- the answers must be no more than two sentences long (this controls those who talk too much and keeps the whole discussion short).
Each of the six volunteers read one question and in order. The children worked in pairs to share their answers.
- What do you like about this story? Why?
- What questions might someone have about this story? This was done as a big group.
- What can we learn about people from the characters in this story?
- What can we learn about God/Jesus from this story?
- What can we learn from this story? In a non-Christian context like a school, I’d suggest that students think about this question and question 6 in their own hearts.
- Who else needs to hear this story? Who can we tell this story to?
