Week 4 Major Writing Task: "Essay" 3
Please note that this Essay diverges from the posted Course Outline schedule
of essays. Based on your progress, we are moving directly to the Annotated
Bibilography, which will count as "Essay 3" instead of Essay 4.
Conducting Research and Composing an Annotated
Bibliography
Here is an explanation of the Annotated Bibliography assignment this
week: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14x-UKHF918D1nlg1TyMo-Pw2o
99XA8dAHbcwKq_D0js/edit?usp=sharing (Links to an external site.)
Here is additional lecture material on compiling Annotated
Bibliographies:
General Introduction to the Annotated
Bibliography:https://youtu.be/JLC9DVs82T0 (Links to an external site.)
How to prepare an Annotated
Bibliography: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/annotatedbibliography (Links to
an external site.)
UNC Writers Guide to Annotated
Bibliographies: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/annotated-bibliogra
phies/ (Links to an external site.)
Brief Video on Annotated Bibliography:https://youtu.be/R0Hsnx0l1q4 (Links to
an external site.)
Columbia College Annotated Bibliography
Guide: https://columbiacollege-ca.libguides.com/mla/annot_bib (Links to an
external site.)
Understanding the General MLA Formatfor Citations:
site.)
(Links to an external
Our Place in the Universe: The Importance of Story
and Storytelling in the Classroom
Cherry, Wayne R, Jr.Knowledge Quest; Chicago Vol. 46, Iss. 2, (Nov/Dec 2017): 50-55.
1.
Full text
2.
Full text - PDF
3.
Abstract/Details
Abstract
TranslateAbstract
When people ancestors first tried to understand the world around them, they told stories. Lightning
struck when an angry Zeus hurled thunderbolts, forged in the heart of a volcano, down from the
clouds. Children in Africa learned morals from stories of the wily and cunning spider Anansi who
used his tricks for his own gain. Today, they also use story to try to understand why things happen.
Their era has seen teens learn of the dangerous impact of a bully in 13 Reasons Why. Charles de
Lint wrote in The Blue Girl, No one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the
stories that you have to tell" (2006). This recognition that individuals are the best tellers of their own
stories is especially true of our students. They each see the world uniquely, and their perspectives
on social events, concepts, and social interaction are just as important as ours are as their teachers.
Full Text
•
•
TranslateFull text
0:00 /0:00
In the Beginning
When our ancestors first tried to understand the world around them, they told stories. Lightning
struck when an angry Zeus hurled thunderbolts, forged in the heart of a volcano, down from the
clouds. Children in Africa learned morals from stories of the wily and cunning spider Anansi who
used his tricks for his own gain. Today, we also use story to try to understand why things happen.
Our era has seen teens learn of the dangerous impact of a bully in I3 Reasons Why. Our children
learn the importance of love from The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Stories have power,
and the stories we tell today do just as much to try to explain our world as did the myths of so long
ago.
Storytelling is a part of who we are as humans. Melvil Dewey himself saw the need to catalog
folktales and stories from the oral tradition in the 390s, a section dedicated to social customs. Stories
form a part of the very fabric of who we are and give insight into the past as much, if not more so,
than the histories that we read. Readers see in Chaucer's prologue to The Canterbury Tales a
snapshot of the medieval world. Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur serves as a metaphor for the
dying age of chivalry. We turn to our stories to glimpse, if only for a fleeting instant, a reflection of the
near or distant past. As teachers, we can leverage our students' own narratives, along with the Four
Cs of 21st-century learning, to create educational opportunities within our classrooms.
Storytelling, the Brain, and the Four C s
The Four Cs of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity go hand in hand with
storytelling projects in the classroom. The Four Cs were established by the National Education
Association (NEA) to help teachers add 21stcentury skills to their classrooms by providing a
framework for incorporating these skills. This framework is a starting point, not a panacea. NEA also
provides links to additional resources that will help when preparing lessons for a 21st-century
classroom (NEA n.d.).
When crafting a narrative, a student (or teacher) cannot help but employ each of the Cs as the story
is crafted, polished, and told. Whether it is the story of a fugitive slave in American history, a retelling
of a classical myth, or a fresh new piece of fan fiction, students working individually or in groups and
using the Four Cs will produce fantastic results. Although a wonderful thing about storytelling
projects is their ability to be completed in groups, collaboration among classmates can also be built
into projects that involve peer review of singleauthor works.
The brain behaves differently during a story as well. According to Annie Murphy Paul, when the brain
processes sensory words, not only do the vocabulary areas of the brain activate, but the sensory
areas of the cortex do as well (2012). The brain actually experiences the story in the same way it
would as if you were inside t he na rrative it self. Furt her, stories make us more empathetic and able
to understand the thoughts and feelings of others (Paul 2012). If stories foster greater empathy, then
telling stories may serve to deepen students' understanding of others. Since stories create
interconnectedness and community, they are a natural fit for a project-based approach.
Project-Based Storytelling
Atwitter about History
When I taught history, I taught it as a narrative; I did not teach it as a litany of facts, dates, and
names. We talked about the past as a series of interlocking events and how there was a causal
relationship between the things that happened. For example, we looked at events during the
American Revolution that directly impacted the wording in our Bill of Rights. When my students
completed projects, they were storytelling projects, not "Google up some facts and dates" projects. I
think my favorite project was "Tweeting about the Past." For this project, I assigned students a
conquistador in the first year and a major 20th-century event in my second year. The rules were
simple: 140 characters (including spaces) per tweet, a minimum of 20 tweets split evenly between
historical facts and what students thought they might see/ think/feel/hear as the conquistador or a
participant in the event, and promised extra points for creativity. I expected a mundane series of
observations, but what I received instead were stories. One student's tweets led me to experience
the voyage of Magellan; another student conveyed the excitement of the golden age of Broadway.
The students really had to work to convey a complete thought in only 140 characters, but they still
completed a cohesive narrative.
At the time of this project, I was both teaching history and working as the full-time librarian in my
school. This combination of responsibilities provided me a terrific opportunity to spend time teaching
my students information-seeking skills and some resource evaluation. I decided I'd rather keep it
simple with fifthgraders and focus on being able to choose a reliable resource and properly
document resources for this particular project. I have always believed, and my professors in library
school taught us, that informationseeking skills need context as much as learning to fish requires a
body of water. It was easy to collaborate with myself by bringing my classes into the library, but for
storytelling projects, even those that are fiction-writing projects, it is always important to include the
library in the process so that students have an opportunity to do research in context.
The Truth Is in the Telling
Another standout project came when I asked students to choose a relative, preferably a
grandparent, and interview the person. I had recently lost my last living grandparent, and I spent a
lot of time grieving the loss of some of the songs and stories he would tell that I simply could not
remember. Once again, in an effort to demonstrate to my students that history is narrative, we used
journalistic and storytelling techniques to convert these interviews into histories of their own families.
Students recorded their relatives whenever possible and used those recordings to create the
narrative. Once narratives were completed, students brought digital copies of their family's pictures;
the photos were imported into movie-making software. A family's narrative was read as a slideshow
cycled through the photos, creating a multimedia story that could be shared and kept as a part of
each family's history.
As before, I collaborated with myself in the library to teach students the difference between primary
and secondary sources. Because they were telling stories that were experiences of their own family
members, I stressed that these eyewitness accounts were, in fact, primary sources of history despite
these episodes not having been described in our textbook. Though we can read about World War II,
some of our grandparents and greatgrandparents actually survived it. Through these journalistic
interviews, students discovered the richness of eyewitness accounts and the importance of primary
sources in research. Once their histories were complete, we discussed them as secondary sources,
and I could explain how we can use quality secondary sources in our research because, oftentimes,
researchers themselves have gone back to primary source documents to create their own works.
One student's project in particular should be highlighted. She asked if her great-grandmother could
narrate the story in her own words. I knew the video would be difficult to produce, would require
additional software, and create extra work, but I told my student we'd give it a shot. I showed her
how to use the software she would need and silently hoped for the best. With a little bit of luck and a
lot of sweat equity, she finished the project beautifully. What I didn't know at the time was that her
greatgrandmother had told my student that she wondered why she was the one telling the story.
When the project was shared with her family, however, my student's great-grandmother finally
believed that she had something important to say (Cherry 2012).
Tools for Digital Storytelling
Many tools can prove very useful for storytelling in the classroom. One of my favorites is using
LEGO bricks to construct narrative scenes and then importing photographs of the creations into a
program such as Microsoft Publisher to create a graphic novel or into iMovie to be combined with
narrations over the scenes. Scenes can even be constructed and shared directly with the class. The
really special thing about generating an e-book, however, is that it can be cataloged in the school
library's online public-access catalog, making each student a searchable author.
Another useful tool for individual work is the iOS app Morfo. Morfo allows students to animate a
twodimensiona l photograph that moves in sync with dialogue recorded by the user. Morfo offers a
paid version and a free version, and t he free version i s suitable for the majority of classroom
applications. The Morfo interface is user-friendly, and the tool exports completed movies directly to
an iPad's photo gallery.
Technology supports a wealth of storytelling options and can be used to create digital book reviews,
digital puppet shows, and even movies with green screen and videoauthoring apps. All of these
options can be elements of storytelling, whether we are sharing the last book we read (no spoilers,
of course), or creating a walking tour of our campuses. STEAM programs can benefit from these
storytelling projects as well, whether they involve creation of illustrations in an art class or students'
use of their own art as the impetus for their stories. Our stories have evolved from tales told around
fires and in mead halls to dynamic multimedia events. This change, however, does not and should
not lessen the impact and importance of the stories we tell.
Conclusion
Charles de Lint wrote in The Blue Girl, "No one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else
can tell the stories that you have to tell" (2006). This recognition that individuals are the best tellers
of their own stories is especially true of our students. They each see the world uniquely, and their
perspectives on social events, concepts, and social interaction are just as important as ours are as
their teachers. When adults tell stories, they tell them from the perspective of years of experience.
Students, on the other hand, may be seeing a story-their own or someone else's-for the first time,
and this fresh perspective will most certainly shape our own.
I asked my students to tell stories because I wanted them to see firsthand how story is woven into
the fabric of our existence. The stories are there somewhere, as J.R.R. Tolkien wrote; we have but
to record them (2000, 145). Our students all have stories to tell; we just need to give them a platform
and an audience. Whether the story is told in LEGO bricks, claymation, puppetry, or text, all that
matters is that the story gets told. Our c lassrooms and l ibraries have become the mead hall, our
students t he bards. As a school libra ria n, a father, and a lover of stories in all forms, I believe with
all of my heart that when anyone tells a stor y, that person changes a life.
Sidebar
Stories form a part of the very fabric of who we are and give insight into the past as much, if not
more so, than the histories that we read.
Our stories have evolved from tales told around fires and in mead halls to dynamic multimedia
events. This change, however, does not and should not lessen the impact and importance of the
stories we tell.
Wayne Cherry
is a librarian and instructional technologist at St. Pius XHigh School in Houston, Texas.
References
Works Cited:
Cherry, Wayne, Jr. 2012. "Keeping History Alive: Oral Tradition in the Digital Age." In Best Digital
Storytelling Examples and Resources, edited by Richard Byrne. (accessed August 5, 2017).
De Lint, Charles. 2006. The Blue Girl. London: Firebrand.
National Education Association. n.d. Preparing 21st Century Students for a Global Society: An
Educator's Guide to the "Four Cs." (accessed
August 5, 2017).
Paul, Annie Murphy. 2012. "Your Brain on Fiction." New York Times (March 17). (accessed June
22, 2017).
Tolkien, J. R. R. 2000. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, assisted by
Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Word count: 2070
Copyright American Library Association Nov/Dec 2017
Storytelling and Academic Discourse: Including More Voices in the Conversation
Mlynarczyk, Rebecca Williams
Journal of Basic Writing; Fall 2013-Spring 2014; 33, 1; ProQuest
pg. 4
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Purchase answer to see full
attachment