Storytelling In A Modern World Essays - Oral Literature, Spoken Word

Storytelling in a Modern World We humans are all storytellers, or story-listeners, or both. That's a crucial element of our humanity. Passing down the generations, constantly changing under the pressure of altering circumstances, stories link humanity together in chains of narrative. Odysseus sets out on the wine-dark sea, fights ferocious monsters, endures endless hardships, and eventually finds his way home; and so does Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried; and so do many thousands of other heroes conceived in the 2,900 years between Odysseus and O'Brien. Storytelling has been, since the earliest times, the way people have ordered their reality. It is the fundamental use of language, that which creates and defines reality. As James Baldwin said in his essay, If Black Language Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?, "People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. . .What joins all languages, and all men [sic], is the necessity to confront life, in order, not inconceivably, to outwit death" (37). Baldwin's understanding of the use of language can be extended to the purpose of storytelling. By telling a story, not only do we create reality, we defeat death. This concept of stories as constructing reality is not unique to Baldwin. In Narrative Means To Therapeutic Ends, by Michael White and David Epston, the same ideas of storytelling are enumerated, "In striving to make sense of life, persons face the task of arranging their experiences of events in sequences across time in such a way as to arrive at a coherent account of themselves and the world around them. . .This account can be referred to as a story..." (47) Ours has been the storytelling century: never before have so many of us had the chance to absorb so many stories. Earlier centuries heard stories face-to-face, figured them out from pictures on the walls of caves or cathedrals, read them in manuscripts, and finally (from the 15th century onward) read them in printed books. The 19th century industrialized storytelling through popular novels and magazines. The 20th century made stories pervasive. Now, they are installed as constant elements in our lives, delivered through movies, radio, television and the Internet, all of them machines of narrative. The 21st century will find new ways of telling the old stories and developing new ones. So far, no one claims excellence for literary experiments on the Internet-but then, the novel at its birth was thought to be frivolous and the movies, when new, were no more than a toy. But there is a danger in this swell of story-telling. There was a time when the story-teller was revered. Story-tellers were considered to be prophets, shamans, visionaries. Today, there are two kinds of storytellers, the money makers, and the outcasts. The outcasts, like Thomas Builds-the-Fire in Sherman Alexie's novel, The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven, are telling the stories of the dispossessed. The stories which do not get told in Hollywood, at least, they rarely get told. We might have expected that humanity would at some point have resisted this swelling ocean of stories, would have been repelled by so much narration, so many ingenious plots, so many satisfying resolutions. But no: it appears we can never get enough. We thirst after stories of all kinds-epics, tragedies, comedies, anecdotes, parables. We are insatiable. Many of us are so enchanted we go back to the same story again and again, searching for fresh meaning. Some people watch Casablanca every chance they get. I used to read The Chronicles of Narnia until I wore the pages out, and I've already burned through four copies of Shogun. There are those who believe Christmas incomplete without A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Given a chance, we convert real tragedy into stories and then makes stories into parables, or life-lessons, which we use as the beginnings of wisdom. The Vietnam War was a tragic time in American history. Boys lost their innocence, lost their lives, and the country was split down the middle because of it. Then, in our stories, it became a metaphor for all wars, for all loss and schisms. It became a profound

Patterns and Sorting Teaching Activities for Children

Patterns and Sorting Teaching Activities for Children Teaching patterns to your child goes hand in hand with teaching them how to sort. Both activities rely on seeing the characteristics and attributes a set of items has in common. When kids think about sorting, they think about putting things into piles based on the most visible characteristic they have in common, but if you help your child to look a little closer, they’ll be able to see subtler common attributes, too. Ways to Sort Items Toddlers and preschoolers start sorting early on when they put their various toys in color-oriented piles. Color is just one of many attributes to look at. Others include: SizeShapeTextureLengthType of objects Depending on the objects you have to use for patterns and sorting, it can get even more complicated. For example, if your child is sorting buttons, he can sort them by size, sort them by color, and/or by the number of holes in each button. Shoes can be sorted into left and right, laces and no laces, stinky or not stinky and so on. Connecting Sorting and Patterns Once your child recognizes that a group of objects can be put into groups by their similar characteristics, they can start making patterns by using those characteristics. Those buttons? Well, let’s consider the ones with two holes â€Å"Group A† and the ones with four holes â€Å"Group B.† If there were any buttons with one hole, those can be â€Å"Group C.† Having these different groups opens up a number of different ways to construct patterns. The most common pattern groupings are: ABAABBAAABABC It’s important to point out to your child that what makes a pattern a pattern is that the sequence repeats in the same order. So, putting down a two-holed button, a four-holed button and a two-holed button isn’t yet a pattern. Your child would need to put down another four-holed button to complete two sequences of the pattern to begin a pattern. Look for Patterns In Books Though the concept of patterning is mathematical, patterns can be found everywhere. Music has patterns, language has patterns, and nature is a world full of patterns. One of the easiest ways to help your child discover patterns in the world is to read books that are either specifically about patterns or contain language patterns. Many children’s books, like  Are You My Mother?,  rely on patterns to tell a story. In that particular book, the baby bird asks each character the title question when he meets them, and they each reply No. In the story of The Little Red Hen, (or the more modern version, The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza), the hen is looking for someone to help grind the wheat and repeats the phrase over and over again. There a number of stories like this. Look For Patterns in Music Music is a little more difficult for some children because not all of them are able to distinguish the difference between a sound going up and a sound going down. There are basic patterns to listen for, though, such as the repetition of a chorus after a verse and the repeating melody of a verse and a chorus. You can also point out the patterns of short notes and long notes or play games that teach your child the patterns of rhythm. Often, learning simple clap, tap, slap patterns can help kids listen for the patterns in music. If your child is more visual, they can benefit from looking at the patterns found on instruments. A piano keyboard, for example, has a number of patterns on it, the simplest of which is found on the black keys. From end to end, the black keys are in groups of 3 keys, 2 keys, 3 keys, 2 keys. Once your child has grasped the concept of patterns, theyll not only see them everywhere, but they’ll be off to a great start when it comes to learning math!