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DIGITAL STORYTELLING Using Digital Storytelling to Teach Subjects in Elementary Schools Lesson plan for Students enrolled in Bachelor Program of Elementary School Teacher Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Pedagogy Satya Wacana Christian University
Background and Goal of teaching Indonesian society has thousands of folk stories and legends that have been told hereditary. It is because story is part of our culture. Name of many cities in Indonesia originally come from legends and folk stories. Each province has its own folk stories. One of well known stories is “Maling Kundang” from the province of West Sumatra. If we ask a 15th year old Indonesian student about “Maling Kundang” they know that it is about a rebellious child. Most of Indonesian story give emphasize on moral values or ethics. Therefore, stories are told hereditary by older people to their children in order to give them moral lesson with the hope that they can change their behavior. The good thing is that most of those stories are still recognized or remembered by many of Indonesian people until now. Therefore, in teaching Indonesian language, many teachers use folk stories as teaching materials. My big idea came from a story in a bible. When I read “the parable of the sower” (Mark 4:20) I found it interesting because Jesus taught a concept using a parable which is contextual. The concept became very meaningful and unforgettable because the story fully created strong and clear connection in our mind. It indicates that story is powerful in conveying a message. From the facts above I have a big question: “how to use digital storytelling to teach science and mathematics for children?” Children love storytelling. However, rarely I found teachers use storytelling to describe processes or concept in science or mathematics. In Indonesia, teachers only use story to teach Indonesian language and ethics. Therefore, creating a story that includes mathematics or science concept will be a novel idea. In order to do this, I will involve my students to do an experiment together. In Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU) I taught some classes. They are English for beginner to intermediate level, Teaching and Learning Media, and Computer as Learning Media. Based on my first degree my specialty is in English. However, my proficiency in using computer is better than my English. Therefore, the chairman of Elementary School Teacher Education Program also assigned me to teach some subjects related to using media and technology.
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I had students from different provinces in Indonesia because my university has a good collaboration with government in some provinces. These students are undergraduate students. They are prepared to be Elementary School Teachers. Many of them are assigned by government to study at SWCU. After they graduate, they will teach in elementary schools in rural area in their own provinces. Their level of English is low intermediate. In the lesson plan that I am going to show, I will teach a Teaching and Learning Media class. The main objectives are first to help my students understand the role of storytelling as a media in teaching. Second, help them identify some important elements of storytelling based on their experience, examples, and reading materials. In order to do that, I will lead my students to be researchers. For further meetings, we will continue our research in storytelling. After that, the product of digital storytelling will be used as assessment for final project.
Lesson plan I – Understanding Elements of Storytelling This lesson plan is designed for bilingual students (English and Indonesian) who are enrolled in Teaching and Learning Media class with blended learning. Goal: Students can understand elements of creating effective digital storytelling and apply the techniques to create effective storytelling for teaching subjects for elementary school students. Objectives: 1. After reading some materials provided, students can write a reflection about things that they learn from the article about how to create a storytelling. 2. Each reading material provided has some important elements about storytelling that students should be able to discuss in forum discussion in Moodle or a class blog. 3. Students can answer reflective questions and write them in their own blog. 4. Students can create and retell a story by using elements or techniques that they learn from the learning materials and class discussion.
ONLINE ACTIVITIES: Reading materials and reflective assignments I post several reading materials in moodle and give them time for about a month to read before the face-to-face class begins. Students are required to access Moodle class and write a reflective note and get involved in forum discussion in Moodle or in class blog.
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1. Some reading materials that I post in moodle or in a class blog. a. Digital Stories Targeting Social Skills for Children With Disabilities: Multidimensional Learning http://isc.sagepub.com/content/43/3/168.full.pdf+html From the reading I’d like to show them how a social story is created for students with disabilities. The point is on the flowchart describing steps used to create digital stories for teaching social skills (p.173) b. Part II - The Art of Storytelling http://www.jasonohler.com/storytelling/storymaking.cfm This article helps my students to understand some basic principals in creating digital storytelling. c. Jesus as a Teacher: http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules/papers/jesus.htm. The focus of this reading is just to see in the eyes of common people (in the perspective of secularism) How Jesus as human taught a concept using parables, stories, and examples that are very contextual to the people at that time. Knowing this is important so that when my students create their own story, they can create a story that is meaningful and contextual. (Since my university is a Christian University, it would be also a good reading for my students) d. Teaching as storytelling: Egan, K. (1985). Teaching as Story-telling: A Non-mechanistic Approach to Planning Teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 17(4), 397-406. doi:10.1080/0022027850170405 The point of this reading to tell them how story-telling can also be a powerful media for delivering concept to children. e. Research about social story. Here is the reference: Quirmbach, L., Lincoln, A., Feinberg-Gizzo, M., Ingersoll, B., & Andrews, S. (2009). Social Stories: Mechanisms of Effectiveness in Increasing Game Play Skills in Children Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Pretest Posttest Repeated Measures Randomized Control Group Design. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 39(2), 299-321. doi:10.1007/s10803-008-0628-9. By reading this research I hope my students know that social story works for children with autisms. My next question is that “Is it also effective to use social story to teach normal children?” This question will be a simple research question for our students. They will do a really simple research to find the answer. (About simple research, I describe it further in my lesson plan bellow) 2. Watch a presentation about Storytelling theory and practice on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFC-URW6wkU&feature=fvw 3. Reflective assignment: Recalling their memory about the most interesting short story they got in their childhood. If it is difficult for them, at least they can find the main idea of the story. If they don’t have any
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idea, they can recall a story they heard from other persons. They will prepare to retell the story in class. Related to their childhood story, these are some follow up questions: a. What makes you remember the story? b. Do you still remember who told you the story? c. What’s the message of the story? d. Describe how did he/she tell the story? i. Can you describe his/her expression? ii. What media did he/she use? (Song, book, real object, picture, etc) e. Can you describe the environment? (where?, when? quite or noisy?) The purpose of the questions above is that to make my students think about elements that are important to tell a story. The goal is that they will realize that a meaningful story can be powerful to make students remember the message of the story. Therefore, honesty in remembering the story and answering questions is really important.
FACE-TO-FACE ACTIVITIES:
Pre-teaching I will start my lecture by saying: “I remember when I was a child, my oldest cousin in Ambon told me a story entitled Batu Badaun (in English it is translated: “leafy stone”) Does anyone knows this story?” “Alright, let me tell you the story…” Then I start telling them the story in English expressively by using slide show like storybird. Then, I ask them: “what do you think about the story?” “is it interesting?” (± 5 minutes)
Whilst-teaching 1. After telling them the story and ask their opinion, I challenge them to tell their own childhood stories. I will ask a student voluntarily to share his/her story to the class. They will tell it in Indonesian language because if it is in English it will be difficult for them. (± 5 minutes) 2. Class discussion: From the material, their own experience, and video, I try to help them identify important elements of retelling a story that latter will be used for a simple experiment after class. a. I start by saying
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“Now, we are going to make a simple research but have a significant result on you and your future. We are all researchers and students. We can start our research with a research question: “what makes a great storytelling?” You yourselves are great researchers and observers of your own lives. From the question, we need to gather data based on your own experience. What makes you remember the story until now? What do you remember? Try to give as much details as possible! Be honest… because your answers may affect the validity of your research.” (±10 minutes) I will draw a table to write all of their responds as follow: Story
Storyteller
Media
b. This time I ask them to imagine being a story teller. I ask them a question: “Can you imagine if you retell the same story to your children or students? What will you do in order to make it better and even more powerful?” “find all the elements of a great storytelling” I will add their answers to their previous answers. The purpose of this activity is that to help them learn from their own experience. The activity will take for about (±10 minutes) Story
Storyteller
Media
c. In order to make sure they include all elements of storytelling, I refer to materials that I give to them: i. I will ask them to refer to the material “Jesus as a teacher” or they may refer to their own holy bible. From the materials we will discuss about how Jesus taught a concept using story, parables, and examples that are contextual for the people at that time without any physical media. Therefore, they may see that “contextual” is one element that should be
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added in the table. I then ask them what other elements that we can find from the Jesus’ teaching. (I hope they mention several other elements) (±10 minutes) ii. Then I play two short videos from youtube about how some people do storytelling in English. These are the links: (±10 minutes) 1. Judy Peiken – Storyteller: (I will play it only for 1 minute) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIydukZ6kQo&feature=related After watching it, I ask them “Do you like the way she retell the story?” “From these videos, can we find any other elements that we think important to retell a story?” (I hope they can see the importance of expression and voice stressing so that they may add them in the table) 2. Then, in order to lead them to the importance of media in storytelling, I display a video: Brown Bear Brown Bear Felt Board Story Cullen's Abc's http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=500LgZK48fc&feature=related after watching the video, I ask them a question “From the video, what makes the story become more interesting?” (I hope they mention the usage of felt board as media or pictures or sound effect) 3. Short presentation and discussion about the role of media a. I will give brief explanation about Piaget’s theory of cognitive development (most of them may have already known because they should have learnt it in the theory of teaching and learning class) Knowing this theory is important to know the cognitive development of children so that they can create media that match their students’ characteristic (±10 minutes) b. I will explain Vygotsky theory of ZPD and describe the function of media in storytelling as scaffolding in ZPD (± 10 minutes) c. I also introduce a digital storytelling (only brief introduction because further explanation about how to create it will be explained in the next meeting) (± 5 minutes) i. How it give effect on children with disabilities (they may refer to reading materials) ii. Give useful websites that provide steps of creating digital storytelling.
Post-teaching 1. Some follow up questions are given in order to invite students to conduct a research regarding storytelling. First, is it possible to use storytelling to teach concept in science or mathematics for children? Can we use all the elements of good storytelling to create a
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story to teach the process of precipitation or numbers? (give them some time to discuss with friends) (±5 minutes) 2. Then I ask them for their responds related to the question above and I ask them to choose a content that they are going to teach for children using a story then create a story or at least a framework or storyboard based on the elements that have already listed together in the table. (± 40 minutes) For the next meeting we will discuss about technical things in creating a digital storytelling using open source programs such as storybird.com. We will continue with the research that will become their final project. I will divide them into small group (each group consist of 3 students) to create a digital storytelling. Their production of story will be tested to a group of children (2-3 children) as an experiment. Each group should find their own target audience. They can teach their own children or their friends’. Comprehension question will be used as indicators of to measure their success.