How Might the Use of an Approach such as Storyline Promote Learners' Creative Potential - Essay Example

? How might the use of an approach such as Storyline promote learners' creative potential? A Discussion Paper of Submission Word Count: 1,848 Introduction Storytelling and story making exercises learners’ creativity and interest to act or imagine as a way of strengthening interpersonal, emotional, and intellectual abilities. Storylines, or creative dramatics, a type of creative play that cultivates learning, makes use of no written conversation (Freeman, Sullivan, & Fulton, 2003: 133). In storytelling and story making, students create and employ their own expressions to communicate meaning. According to Starko (2005: 39), even though a teacher gives a starting point, storylines motivate learners to improvise, create, or modify the original form. Children view and understand the world in a different way that adults do. Children’s emotional and imaginative potentials are much more enhanced than their logical or rational abilities (Kelner, 1993:52). While adults depend on knowledge and logic, children exercise creativity and play to discover and make sense of their world (Wagner, 1988:30). In this case, it is justifiable for teachers to take advantage of these two capabilities as a learning device. Storylines offer this opportunity, connecting the domain of imagination and play to the domain of knowledge and reason (Kelner, 1993: 61). Storylines encourage learners to become emotionally and physically engaged in learning and, as a result, to learn more productively (Edmiston, Encisco &King, 1987: 79). It allows learners to take part in a story, or to intermingle with an idea, character, or theme. In this fashion, storylines encourage a better grasp of material and improves learners’ creativity and understanding of texts (Thom, 2008: 33). Storylines also cultivates vocabulary and language improvement, inspires creativity and imagination, promotes higher level thinking, and uses multiple intelligences (Dickinson & Neelands, 2006: 98). Learners should express themselves, analyse and structure information, create new thoughts, understand ideas, and interrelate with others (Dickinson & Neelands, 2006:44). Thus, storylines completely involves learners of all potentials and levels. The objective of this essay is to discuss the contributions of storylines in enhancing students’ creativity. Storylines endow learners a sense of control over their acquisition of knowledge as the educator exits the picture and enables learners to have the inner focus (Neelands, Baldwin & Fleming, 2003: 81). The creative character of storylines guarantees that children are the ones who make the decisions, taking a dynamic role in influencing and creating the learning episode (Taylor, 2000: 104). Hence, learners become determined and motivated. Ultimately, storylines can be a vital component of a general model of language arts. It fosters development in all domains of literacy and motivates children to apply language for important reasons. Element of Storylines, Storytelling, and Story Making There are several important elements of storylines: feedback, a secure setting, randomness, and structure (Beetlestone, 1998: 68). Learners want to receive both informal and formal feedback. Informal feedback is appropriate when a mentor reacts in a manner that is suitable to the role play; for instance, crying at sad events (Beetlestone, 1998: 68-69). Once a play is finished, the mentor can provide further formal feedback by understanding the experience with learners and identifying those aspects that were performed well. As learners become more acquainted with the practice of feedback, they are more capable of thinking about these experiences and to explain effective and less effective dramatic components (Skinner-Linnenberg, 1997: 50). Learners in time build up a critical skill and become expert in providing each other constructive feedback. Any form of creativity requires a particular extent of discovery and risk (Dickinson & Neelands, 2006: 19). Creativity is developed when the instructor constructs a safe, enjoyable setting. Closing the door of the classroom throughout the first learning phases of storylines can contribute in enhancing a sense of belongingness and security (Freeman et al., 2003: 133). An educator who is eager to accept creative difficulties by role playing and taking part in storytelling and story making activities ignites the flame for more creative engagements. Definite, constructive feedback that recognises learners and their attempts will make them comfortable in acting imaginatively (Freeman et al., 2003: 133). Ultimately, a mentor should for no reason coerce learners to take part in storylines; instead, s/he should constantly request for volunteers. Storylines are changeable and natural (Starko, 2005: 20). Even though it functions well when mentors give a starting point, this basis should be open-ended and adjustable (Dickinson & Neelands, 2006: 47). As learners become more at ease with storylines, they will start to apply experiences and ideas from their personal lives to form individual deviations from the original subject matters (Taylor, 2000: 62). Making use of a ready-made script would hamper this form of individualisation, imaginativeness, and creativity. Hence, it is a useful practice not to use written conversations. Give structure, but motivate creativity by allowing learners discover their own expressions to take the meaning and look at other endings (Skinner-Linnenberg, 1997:71). Even though role playing is quite normal for children, creating a story can be a challenging and conceptual practice. Children perhaps will require structure to orient their talk and actions during the preliminary phases (Thom, 2008: 39). The teacher can give this structure by illustrating and explaining the main story, as well as potential characterisations, conversation, and actions. It is important to keep children’s storylines simple and brief, creating not more than five characters (Neelands et al., 2003: 91). Learners with experience in storylines will require rough structure. Character’s Components The character’s components are the particular instruments a learner uses to make stories (Dickinson & Neelands, 2006: 88). Learners take pleasure in gaining knowledge about the art of acting and they enjoy knowing how each of these components can be exercised successfully. The four character’s components used in storylines are group work, imagination, body, and voice (Thom, 2008: 113). Once learners are at ease with storylines, they will be capable of working separately in groups. In one session, an instructor will finally be able to bring in a story, illustrate and discuss it, assign groups to different corners of the classroom to practice, and afterwards gather the students to act out their stories (Kelner, 1993: 102). Interpersonal or social abilities can be trained in order to ensure the success of such activity. Making learners aware of this certain character’s component will contribute in preventing much of the chaos that takes place when learners are working in groups (Kelner, 1993: 102). Collaborative work also gives further opportunity to guide and explore social abilities. The ‘imagination’ component relates to learners’ capability of making a character realistic (Freeman et al., 2003: 134). Teachers should train learners to remain in character and be constantly realistic. Students have to learn how to apply their entire body and their face to express a sentiment or make a character (Beetlestone, 1998: 49). Teachers can assist learners in concentrating explicitly on the on the body in several ways. They can encourage learners to perform a silent act, where in they perform a pantomime. A bulletin board can be placed, depicting diverse expressions, gestures, and faces (Beetlestone, 1998: 49-50). Learners can rehearse using their body and face to mutely respond to others as they articulate their dialogues or act out. They can practice various ways of moving or gesturing. Lastly, learners can act out or perform different events in a silent tone (Beetlestone, 1998: 50). The voice is a major instrument. In employing the voice, students should deal with the tone, pitch, and volume (Neelands et al., 2003: 112). Actors should deliver their lines in a clear and audible voice. The instructor can assist learners in this component by illustrating the distinction between an acting voice and a speaking voice (Starko, 2005: 83). It is at times useful for the instructor to go to the back of the classroom while putting students in front for a dialogue, showing that learners should perform to the entire room. A student should speak unhurriedly to be understood. Changing pitch is vital. Low and high voice that concentrates on pitch, like ambulance sirens or statements with low parts and high parts, are good methods of improving a sense for pitch (Starko, 2005: 83-84). Ultimately, learners have to be trained in forming character voices, which differ in quality. The instructor should look at the sounds characters, things, or animals may create (Thom, 2008: 107). Vocal practices while teaching learners to concentrate on this character’s component in helpful. As claimed by Wagner (1988), Verriour (1990) and Sullivan & Fulton (2003), storylines have been applied for educational and therapeutic purposes at school and clinical settings. Likewise, Taylor (2000: 86) argues that storylines are normally applied in several programmes to enhance the creativity, social skills, and understanding of children. However, storylines involves all the tasks to enhance children’s creativity and the notion of play also gain primacy in all these tasks. By playing, a child familiarises him/herself to his/her environment, acquires new knowledge, and understands life. Hence, socially, emotionally, mentally, and physically, s/he wholly develops. Kelner (1993: 116) argues that children role plays, invent rhythms, sing songs, draw faces, and change clothes. The connection between the communication in a social reality and the communication in a play, one way or another, allows the application of play for storylines in teaching (Freeman et al., 2003: 1356). By means of storylines, storytelling, and story making exercised in the classroom, several theoretical concepts and realities for the child become tangible (Dickinson & Neelands, 2006: 103). In addition, as it copes with any event, confrontation, role, idea, and object from several domains with various levels of discussion, storylines in the classroom embodies a broad array of alternatives for a child to make sense of events and characters. Conclusions Storylines, storytelling, and story making is a challenging and extensive venture that can be exploited to develop a sense of belongingness in a classroom and improve knowledge acquisition. There are very important ideas to take into account when trying to apply this effective learning instrument. Permit learners to gradually become at ease with this tool. Make use of storylines infrequently; perhaps two times a week will suffice (Freeman et al., 2003: 132). Think about employing storylines when learners are prone to be impatient, bored, and need an opportunity to engage. Allow learners to act out or perform in front of other students. Children normally like performing and acting out and it is quite simple to move groups of students to other rooms to act out brief storylines (Neelands et al., 2003: 29). Ultimately, it is important to bear in mind that storylines is intended to be a pleasant learning experience. Teachers, particularly in primary classroom settings, should prioritise enjoyable learning. In order to develop the inner abilities of students and to attain long-term indications of performance, teachers need to create dynamic learning environment in the classroom. Hence, aside from teachers possessing knowledge on modern methods and perspectives, they also need to have appropriate experience and knowledge on how to employ ideas with appropriate methods in its greatest into their disciplines (Wagner, 1988: 48). At present, in education institutions, several studies have been carried out to enhance the knowledge and creativity of learners and to bring him/her to success in all his/her endeavours. These investigations, in multi-intelligence functioning and reorganised methods, concentrate on enhancing learner’s creativity, offering strong and sound personal growth and making students eager in learning (Thom, 2008, 126). In a storyline-oriented classroom setting, since learners reorganise the information provided on their own by applying intellectual components instead of acquiring the information personally from the instructor (Freeman et al., 2003: 138), storyline in schools is considered as an effective way of enhancing creativity. . 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