SIMPLEST STORIES FOR STUDENT TELLING
(excerpts from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain)

1) We've been working with pueblo kids, feeling our way slowly along. We didn't know if we would try this, since for the most part these kids are extremely reticent about speaking in public, but things have evolved to the point where they would like to try learning stories to tell to younger kids in the school (at the moment we're working with 3rd, 5th and 6th graders)

As a warm-up we'd like to find a couple of 'can't miss' short, simple and easy to learn stories that the kids can read/hear/ and retell to each other all in one session (about an hour) so that they can have an immediate experience of success which hopefully will give them confidence to go to the next level.

2) I have found the retellings of folk tales in old school readers to be helpful. They are usually bare-bones and clear, although rather plain and sometimes boring. But they give the kids the bones of the story quickly. Of course, they are in great need of being pepped up with some good storytelling! Most schools have some old readers about, and I've picked up a number at thrift stores for very little money. In a similar vein, I watch for picture book retellings for the primary grades. Again, some of these are not really well done, but they provide the story bones for the kids. Finally, I often start with familiar stories, like The Three Little Pigs or Red Riding Hood. That way, they can concentrate on their storytelling skills with a story they know pretty well.
Comment: One 'problem' with the old readers for pueblo kids is that they tend to be pretty much disconnected from the experience of these quite isolated kids. Not to speak about old stereotypes. That said... I walked into a class the other day where middle school pueblo kids were almost on the floor watching a Three Stooges movie where they are headed west and are thinking about eating 'corned beef and savages..."

3) One book that I have had great success with is Stories In My Pocket by Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss. They have adapted many different tales into shorter pieces, along with some suggestions for telling. Also, both volumes of Twenty-Two Splendid Tales To Tell From Around the World by Pleasant Despain would work as well.

4) This may be "taking coals to Newcastle". Byrd Baylor has collected Legends told by Arizona Indian Children (sub-title of book), And It Is Still That Way. Published by Trails West Publishing, copyright 1976. She was most willing to grant me permission to retell some of them. I promised not to tell them in the summer. Most stories are a page to a page and a half long.

5) The Lion and the Mouse--an Aesop fable. I usually introduce the story using hand/finger puppets, but I think it would work without them. And there might be other Aesop fables which are suitable.

6) One I love is Mr. Wiggle/Waggle - done with thumbs and fists. I've found that kids do take it home and teach to siblings, and it establishes that stories are going to be fun. I take time when the two thumbs met in the middle to have audience participate in giving ideas of what two thumbs can do when they met - hug, thumb wrestle - and act it out with thumbs. Get great ideas and a sense of the crowd from ideas generated.
Here's a great version at Papa Joe's site:
http://www.pjtss.net/lib/pj/t25.htm
Comment: Yes, yes, yes! They adore it as do the parents. A real fun and easy story to learn. Last year we actually ended our performance at the after school program with all of the tellers on stage performing it together. It was great fun!
Comment: This is described in detail in Fran Stallings/Hiroko Fujita collection, there titled Mr. Brown and Mr. Black. (But I prefer the names of Mr. Wiggle and Waggle...)
Comment: I love this little no-fail gem. I learned it from a school librarian in Upstate New York at a conference in 1975 but didn't start telling it until 1981. All through the 80s I taught it to children and adults (mostly teachers and librarians) in the US, Canada, Germany, and Ireland (north and south). Everywhere that story went, it acquired friends who gave it new names and places. My favorite is still the one Liz Weir told me about after I'd been in Belfast years ago - where the characters became a Catholic and a Protestant. This discussion is such fun, like looking for relatives on the family tree. Did this story just spring up in different places, the way folklore does? Did that school librarian start it all? Where did she get it? Where did the German living in Japan learn it? How far back can we trace it? I wish I knew the name of that New York librarian so I could give her a big thanks - and ask her where she got the story.
Comment: I learned it from Hiroko Fujita (who learned it from a German living in Japan...) and those are English translations of the names she used; but when I teach it, I call them Joe and Jane!
Comment: We heard it from Fujita san when she was in Santa Fe with Fran.

7) Don't forget that Heather Forest has The ABC's of Aesop's Fables under Story Library on her website at
http://www.storyarts.org

8) I am in the middle of a residency, working with grades 4-6. Always, the point of the work becomes clear when small groups of kids start going down to the very young kids, grades k-2. (Three is actually a little threatening, unless you have the right material.) They come back very charged up, and others begin to take things seriously. I start with stories they already sort-of know: Goldilocks, Three Pigs, Billy Goats Gruff, and Red Riding Hood. Over the years, I have come to understand these stories well enough that I can quickly demonstrate how they work, using volunteer tellers, concentrating on the elements of characterization and physicalization. Everybody sees how Goldilocks works and that it is a good story!-- as soon as a kid starts "doing" the bears, the audience attention snaps-to. They don't have to learn theses stories from print, which is a whole different and very hard skill, they just have to recapture them, and reclaim them from picture books/reading aloud, and Warner Brothers and "fractured" parodies. If you concentrate on making the stories work the way they are supposed to work, without adding anything smart-alecky, or lots of "creative" new elements, they will give you enough good material to take several groups to the lower grades, and make those lower grades happy. Then we move on to work on other material, each kid working on his own story. Some of the stuff is what's floating around anyway-- One Black Eye, Red Red Lips, Giant Purple Gorilla kinds of stuff-- some of it is classic nursery lore, but needs more individual attention, like Gingerbread Man, or the Wolf and the Seven Little Kids. And some of it is classic maerchen, like The Seven Ravens. There are some examples of my coaching suggestions on our website, under "Folktales 4 U" -- check out Gingerbread Man and Got You Where I Want You for example.
http://www.folktale.net

9) Beauty and the Beast Storytellers, a.k.a. Mitch Weiss and Martha Hamilton, have a bunch of tales at the back of their wonderful book, Children Tell Stories: A Teaching Guide. These are sorted by degrees of difficulty. They also have later collections of tales especially for kids--Stories in My Pocket: Tales Kids Can Tell -- and a collection of Pourquoi tales, too, I
think. The Hamilton/Weiss approach is great--very well thought through. With exercises, hand-outs, etc. I'd recommend getting this if you don't have it already.

10) I have found that The Tailor and the story Why Frog and Snake Don't Play Together interest the kids at that age level. They're short and easy storyline to remember. The Tailor is of course very repetitive and Frog and Snake can be lots of fun when you improvise what the two of those little kids find to do when they play and talk to each other, that's not written anywhere, the kids get to improvise. It's an easy storyline. That's the trick, the storyline goes from A to B to C. Bundle of Sticks, an Aesop's Fable, is another really short one and can be done with three kids even or more telling it. I would rewrite the dialogue to Bundle of Sticks to fit your situation. Pueblo man is old and calls children, or Pueblo man is going away on long journey and leaving children to take care of themselves. You can gather some sticks and have a visual aid or prop as I call them. I sometimes teach a story from Anne Anne Pellowski's Book, Why Plants Have Human Parts, an Iroquois myth.It's also short and easy to remember and gives a good reason to look closer at plants next time you go outside.

11) While I do have my book of Medieval Tales, I think the stories there will need more fleshing out than one session. I use Aesop's Fables and some of the stories from Jane Yolan Favorite Folktales From Around the World. I suggest copying or writing selected stories from that book so the kids have larger print and don't get confused by looking through all the stories. I do that with Aesop also. Unless your goal is for the kids to read and tell, you might also just tell them a handful of stories and let them retell. That will depend on your goal and how much time you have spent telling them stories so they have a model and discussing how tellers make the story their own. If kids are uncomfortable about speaking in public, I have found having them work with partners to be very useful. They support each other. Of course, one kid often ends up being the stronger teller, but that's okay. You could also have them tell in groups of two for practice, then combine groups into four and so on. In that way, they are telling to larger and larger audiences as they go and it helps them when they tell in front of more people. And giving them a choice of standing or sitting on a stool may also help. Once they feel like they are in charge and in control it can eliminate some fear.

12) When a child is completely tongue-tied in front of observers, he/she can still participate in storytelling performance through the use of Story Theater (kids act out the story silently while a fluent kid does all the dialog and narration) or by handling the props for a partner who can then concentrate on the telling. For example, I've had students as young as second grade learn The Story of Paper Flower (my contribution to JOINING IN, Yellow Moon Press), which can be illustrated by folding/cutting shapes out of paper while telling. An experienced teller can handle both tasks, but beginners have an easier time if one tells while the other concentrates on the paper. (It takes some practice to work out appropriate timing together.) And this provides a role for the student whose mouth isn't ready to open in front of an audience. STORIES TO PLAY WITH includes several other paperfolding/cutting/tearing stories which can be done this way. Handkerchief stories (see Pellowski's collection of family stories), "storygami," and draw-and-tell stories would also lend themselves to this kind of duo presentation.

13) Many of the key ingredients have already been mentioned, I think, for this kind of story: repetitive lines, a story the kids already know and love, cumulative tales. Beyond that, keeping it short is a good idea to increase chances for early success. Some of the favorites I've taught to my grandchildren in quick, informal storytellings at home prove to be the best with other kids too. Stories like The Ghost with One Black Eye (the hands-down favorite), Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Turnip, The Tailor (I call it The Story Coat), Bracelets. Older kids like the jump tales, like Red, Red Lips, Tailypo (which can be fairly short if told bare-bones), Turn Me Over (in Joining In, and again it can be shortened easily for easy telling). I think the same criteria applies to the stories they select as for the ones we select--a story we love, relevant to our audience/age group, a story we understand very well.

14) Also, Tilly and The Golden Arm. Last year two of my storytelling students told Tilly in tandem. (How's that for alliteration? They did a fantastic job!

15) Passing along another thought. The older ones delight in the Hodja and Noodlehead stories. Last year two student's picked The Night the Moon Fell Into the Well and the Mule Egg. They were a hoot!

16) Another one which I often use with young learners is Wide Mouth Frog (also in STORIES TO PLAY WITH -- Fujita-san learned it from me). It's a simple formulaic tale (frog follows the same questioning pattern with several animals). This structure makes it very easy to learn orally. It has ample space for characterization and variation. Both student tellers and their younger audiences can grasp the humor. AND -- it lends itself to duo-retelling (young WMF: parent/other animals). This format allows pairs to practice with each other, each carrying only half the burden of the story and, when they exchange roles, incorporating the good ideas they got from their partner. I think your Pueblo kids will appreciate this cooperative aspect. I've used it with kids as young as kindergarten, and I've also used it to unstuff stuffy adults.

Traits to look for in seeking other stories for this kind of dyad practice:
short
funny
formulaic structure
2 characters, or 1 continuing character and others in turns.

Some others include:
Little Red Hen
Three Billy Goats Gruff
Gingerbread boy
Mouse Marriage

For older students or adults
King's Cat/Stonecutter
No News
The Judgement of Karakush

17) I like repetitive stories, like Chicken Little, Gingerbread Man. Once you have the basic pattern, it's just simple variation.

(This web page updated 8/10/03)