Grade: Elementary
Subject: Language

#2065. Narrative Therapy

Language, level: Elementary
Posted Tue Dec 5 15:21:39 PST 2000 by Caitlin Naginey (cnaginey@hotmail.com).
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, US
Materials Required: available story books
Activity Time: 1 hour
Concepts Taught: teaching receptive and expressive language

"Narrative Therapy"
Fourth Grade
Rationale
I am going to teach a lesson on receptive and expressive language through the use
of narrative therapy (AKA story telling). Students need to be familiar with and
explore their language skills at a very young age in addition to using their voicing
skills. Story telling is an activity that will help the students to learn the proper
communication skills they will need.

Objectives
1. The students will be able to demonstrate improved usage of story
telling/conversational skills such as:
a) eye contact
b) appropriate pausing
c) loud/clear annunciation
2. The students will be able to identify/define target vocabulary words from
their story.
3. Students will be able to verbally summarize events from the narrative in
sequence with increased syntactic complexity.

Lesson
1. The teacher will begin by sitting the students down around her for story time.
As the teacher reads a story he/she does so using all the proper techniques of story
telling.

2. After the story is over the teacher goes over all the important aspects (proper
techniques) of story telling. These aspects are as follows:
-choosing a good story
-identifying key words and points from the story
-pronunciation
-pausing and intonation
-using visual aides
-answering questions after the story has been read

3. To teach the aspect of choosing a good story, the teacher will instruct the
students to pick a story topic in which they have interest or experience in, such as
a favorite animal, sport, or hobby. To teach the students how to identify key
words or points, the teacher will instruct the students to find target words within
the story grammar. To teach the students the aspect of pronunciation, the teacher
will instruct the students to speak loudly, clearly, and at a steady rate. To teach
the aspect of pausing and intonation, the teacher will introduce the concept of
pausing before and after sentences and paragraphs, and the concept increasing
and decreasing the pitch of their voices. To teach the aspect of using visual aides,
the teacher will give the students some examples, and encourage them to be as
creative as possible. For the last aspect, the teacher will just instruct the students
that they should always allow time for questions at the end for anyone that may
not have understood part of the story.

4. The teacher will then give the students time to chose their own story and
practice telling it in small groups using all the information previously presented.

5. The students will then have to individually present their story to the entire
class, including the teacher, for evaluation.