Using storytelling in government high-school religious education classes

I started telling Bible stories to my small year 11 scripture class of seven students this year. The class is held in an Australian, government high-school.

This followed a visit by a story trainer to our home bible study group in March. First I read, Telling the Gospel through Story and then watched some of the stories at this website. I noticed how attentive the students were during the story and how good the discussion was afterwards. The scripture classes started by learning two simple stories about Jesus from Mark’s Gospel in order to develop the necessary skills. After that I received some further training as our church held a whole weekend of storytelling.

This term we are learning the Old Testament stories from the Basic Set. The following pattern has developed for each one-hour scripture class: I always learn the story before the class. We start with prayer. I tell the story to the class and then read the Biblical text aloud. A sheet of paper, on which the Biblical text is printed in two colours, provides alternating parts for pairs of students to read aloud to each other. They do this at least twice. The class then divides into two small groups of 3 or 4 and each group uses a sheet of butcher’s paper and coloured pencils to prepare a six-picture cartoon strip. The text and cartoons are then removed and the students tell each other the story, in pairs.

Students have started volunteering to tell their stories to the whole class, but not all are willing to do so. I was feeling a little disappointed about this until two students started sharing what had happened outside the class. It was a great blessing to hear that they had told the Rebellion story (Genesis 3), we had learned the week before, as testimonies, one in their church and the other to their school Christian society. In the latter case, a non-Christian friend asked her to continue the story as, after hearing it, she began to understand why she needed salvation. a non-Christian friend asked her to continue the story as, after hearing it, she began to understand why she needed salvation. I have learned from this to trust that God is working, even when progress is not apparent, and I will continue to teach storying and use stories in my scripture classes next year.

Story used with permission, the teacher is an emeritus university professor who has been doing voluntary scripture teaching for 6 years.