A recent article on 538.com on the amount of money available to public schools and the effect of the rescission suggests that public schools all around the country will be facing another round of budget cuts. If you are a professional storyteller who does a fair amount of work in schools – and there are a few of you left out there after the recession of 2007 – I thought you might appreciate this heads up. Read more »
Press Play to hear storyteller Larry Brown talks about storytelling in higher education on the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf.
All life is narrative, well at least narrative is how we perceive the structure of the cosmos, derive meaning, use language, and develop community. That seems to be a universal experience. I cannot imagine teaching informally or formally without narrative, without telling stories. So in the undergraduate or graduate classroom, or in alternative adult education, I do tell. I am aware that considerable contemporary research has indicated the value and effectiveness of story in teaching/learning, but I often structure the class period itself as a narrative plot. The class Read more »
or Teaching Without Pressuring the Teacher to Teach or the Child to Learn
Stories and songs are natural teachers and create natural paths to literacy.
Stir a child’s imagination with stories, songs, and poems, and you feed the roots of learning. Once memorized, a single sentence from a piece of prose, a song, or a poem, creates a model for many hundreds of sentences to come.
The linguistic significance of these models looks deceptively simple, but every sentence or stanza, no matter how short, is packed with grammatical and syntactic models. Let’s take a closer look at one simple stanza from my song, Bug in My Hand:
There’s a bug in my hand,
and it climbed on my nose,
and it played a bass drum,
bum, bum, bum, bum.
Here are a few of the grammatical (syntactic) structures in this one short stanza. Read more »
Recently I was asked again what books I recommend for a school age. They asked me for a detailed list of books hmmm What follows is the 11 anthologies that I would suggest for classroom use – These books are not just for teacher or students. I will return to a picture book selection next week. – These are all amazing collections of stories form around the world that every teacher should have at there fingertips. Read more »
Press Play to hear Brother Wolf takes questions from his audience on the Art of Storytelling Show on how to work with Audiences This is 2 of 3 shows commemorating the 100th Anniversary episode of the Art of Storytelling with Brother Wolf Show. This Episode is podcast in 128 bit rate – this higher bit rate costs more to cast online – if you enjoyed listening to the higher quality show – perhaps you would consider purchasing your next download through the website….
This picture is called a Wordie – it is picture of what words people are using when making comment on the blog. Read more »
I began telling stories as a member of an acting ensemble in 1976, presenting storytelling as a major part of our repertoire. We worked primarily in park and recreation centers and schools. As members moved away or went into other fields, we evolved into – and I co-founded – the Black Storytellers Alliance (BSA) in direct response to the demand for storytelling to deliver the inspirational and cultural lessons embodied in our stories.
Early on I encouraged members of the audience to share the storytelling space by becoming a part of the story and one of the characters in the story. On many occasions, I was unable to use all the audience members who wanted to participate! It was wonderful to have so many trying to Read more »
Here is a list of ideas for starting a storytelling festival in your school or your community.
Ways to get it started. (You pick which one you want to start with.) Find a few teachers and/or parents and offer to tell a story in the teachers’ classrooms. Start suggesting the idea that students can also retell or Read more »
Brother Wolf, Storytelling in Schools | Brother Wolf | 
June 14, 2014 11:10 am | 
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