Sharon Kirk Clifton, Storyteller

Telling Tales in School

Stories in Bloom: Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy

(Adapted by Sharon Kirk Clifton from an article by Fran Stallings inThe National Storytelling Journal, 1986)

Sometimes you may want to follow a visit with a storyteller (or your own classroom storytelling) with activities that allow the students to think more about the tales they have just experienced. Applying Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy can help teachers know that they are planning activities that truly expand the thinking of their students.

Of course, the story comes first. Most agree that a story must be worth telling for its own sake. Stories well told help in the development of language, creativity, imagination, cultural understanding, values, and interpersonal relationships. However, stories do provide an impetus for applying the six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, including the higher order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Sharon Kirk Clifton, as “Jack’s Mama,” tells a story entitled “Jack and the Robbers,” a Southern Appalachian version of “ The Bremen Town Musicians.” Below are some suggested ways to implement post-storytelling activities, using that story as an example:

KNOWLEDGE: Activities use simple memory of the story in its original form; recall, relate, and organize facts. Student can repeat, define, list, describe, and demonstrate the stories. Examples: Why was the mule so sad? Which animal was too old to catch mice? What was Jack’s favorite song? Where did each animal hide? Draw a scene from the story.

COMPREHENSION: Activities show understanding of the story by translating it into a slightly different form or restating it in one’s own words. Students can explain, identify, put in order, and summarize. Examples: Name the animals in the order that Jack met them. Retell the story in your own words. After students have drawn their favorite scenes of the story, arrange the pictures in the order that they occurred.

APPLICATION: Activities use the story information in different formats, settings, or situations. Students can illustrate, translate, interpret, dramatize, and classify. Application level activities still stick fairly closely to the original story material, but students decide where and how to use it. Examples: Make a map showing the whole story sequences in a single diagram. Sing Jack’s favorite song as each of the animals would have sung it; act like the animal as you sing. Look up information about each kind of animal. What other animals are related to each one? Re-enact the story as an impromptu skit. Make puppets and present a puppet play of the story. Retell the story outside of school, perhaps to brothers and sisters on a long car trip or to friends at a slumber party.

ANALYSIS: Activities clarify the elements, relationships, and organizational principles within the story, going deeper or beyond explanations provided in it. Examples: What did the animals have in common? What did Jack have in common with the animals? Compare/contrast this story with other cumulative tales. How is this story similar to other stories, movies, or TV shows you know? What is each animal’s role in the story?

SYNTHESIS: Activities produce a new plan, relationship, or communication by rearranging story material plus fresh material. Students can compose, propose, plan, invent, predict, assemble, imagine, and design. Compose a ballad, which tells the story to music. Design a poster advertising the first professional concert of the animal singers. Retell the story using different, but related, animals (researched above) which live in a different setting or time; perhaps instead of using an ox, a mule, a hound dog, a cat, and a rooster, you’d use a musk ox, a burro, a coyote, a tiger, and a parrot, for example. Retell the story from the viewpoint of the robbers. Add a sixth animal to the bunch and describe what this animal would do when the robbers showed up and how the robber would interpret it. Brainstorm as a class of small group for other ways the animals could live together. Create a sequel; tell the further adventures of the animals. Tell what happened to the robbers.

EVALUATION: Activities judge the story or the new product, using evidence and criteria (not just personal preference or value). Students can rate, choose, criticize, assess, and justify. (Note: While evaluation is not necessarily the highest level of thinking skills, the others need to happen first.)

Examples:

Take sides -- animals against robbers. Who should keep the house? Give reasons or evidence to support your side.

Which character was most important to the story? Why? (Develop criteria for this judgment.)

What make this story funny? Cite actions, dialogue, and misunderstandings.

Note that Bloom’s Taxonomy is not simply “ordered”; it is cumulative. Some items may be similar to items listed at lower levels, but at the higher level, a new dimension is added, making the activity more complex. Each level up the progression utilizes some or all of the levels beneath it. Further, the taxonomy is not a developmental progression depending upon age or experience. Students of any age can do appropriate work at each of the levels.

Consider inviting Sharon Kirk Clifton to conduct her “Telling Tales in School: Implementing Storytelling Across the Curriculum” workshop at your school. She also conducts workshops with students to help them develop their own storytelling skills.

For other ideas, visit "Teachers: What to do When the Telling's Through."

"Storytelling is ageless, the original language art, the root of drama, poetry, and prose. Rooted in antiquity, reborn with each new telling, it speaks directly to that part of us which does not change as we move through our lives. We listen, time changes, and we become ageless, too." -Tim Jennings

Contact Sharon Kirk Clifton:

E-Mail or 812-346-7930

and let the telling begin!