Oral Storytelling

Course Overview
This course series is created to help Out of School Time providers to add storytelling to the program delivery to get their participants develop their listening skills and also enjoy some scenes from other parts of the world. Our program brings together new immigrant children as well as children born to immigrant families here in Canada. Our Afterschool programs helps the children to integrate themselves into a Canadian culture as well as staying connected to their parents and grandparents heritage. The participants in this session are 6 to 9 years old predominantly from West Africa.
Today We will be using a story we previously posted on YouTube and some pictures to tell our story.
The cover photo depicts how stories are told in a traditional setting. In most cases the storyteller who is an adult or grandparent in the family sits and all the listeners sit around them forming either a circle or semi-circle pattern.
The title of todays story is Snail Hunting. Let us take about 7 minutes to watch Sefaa and her grandmother go hunt for snails in the outskirts of the town they live. We will continue back to our activities.
https://youtu.be/MS4kGoEs2Bo

Course Overview
This course series is created to help Out of School Time providers to add storytelling to the program delivery to get their participants develop their listening skills and also enjoy some scenes from other parts of the world. Our program brings together new immigrant children as well as children born to immigrant families here in Canada. Our Afterschool programs helps the children to integrate themselves into a Canadian culture as well as staying connected to their parents and grandparents heritage. The participants in this session are 6 to 9 years old predominantly from West Africa.
Today We will be using a story we previously posted on YouTube and some pictures to tell our story.
The cover photo depicts how stories are told in a traditional setting. In most cases the storyteller who is an adult or grandparent in the family sits and all the listeners sit around them forming either a circle or semi-circle pattern.
The title of todays story is Snail Hunting. Let us take about 7 minutes to watch Sefaa and her grandmother go hunt for snails in the outskirts of the town they live. We will continue back to our activities.
https://youtu.be/MS4kGoEs2Bo

Activities I
What is a snail?

https://www.snail-world.com/snail-anatomy/
Name four different types of snail.
In Sefaa’s Village which of these types of snails are being hunted

Which group of animals does snails come from?
Which part of snail does Sefaa likes in the Story?
https://youtu.be/xu7hICK8f58

From the video above, what part of snail interest you or scares you most?

Part two
Using this Snail as your main character let us tell the story from the snail point of view using the following guidelines.
How do snails live
What do they eat?
How do they protect themselves from predators?
Apart from humans what other circumstance threatens the lives of snails?
Here is my own
Hello, my name is Sinai the snail, I live in the tropical rain forest in West Africa. I have other brothers and sisters in other part of the world. This is my story. During the rainy season, the soil in the forest is moist to help me move around in search of food. Because of dangers in the forest I prefer to hide under the thick pile of wet leaves, under fallen and rotten trees and in trees’ buttress. During the night towards the early morning I come out to roam freely and eat. I enjoy green herbs, wild fruits, and vegetables as well as mushrooms.
Unfortunately, life has become very terrible lately due to the aggressive nature humans have taken toward my kind and many more inhabitants of the forest. They come every night to hunt for us one after the other until their baskets and sacks are filled up. They carry their captives to an unknown place never to return. The stories told to us by our elders are not good. They say humans eat us, sell us, or just keep us as their pet. Currently it is nearing the end of the rainy season, and I am lucky I am still here. However, our population has reduced tremendously, a lot more of us will also perish during the six long months of hibernation and during the annual land preparation method these humans use, burning the rubbles they have cleared for growing crops they end up killing a lot more of us. There is probably one good thing about us which keeps us around until one day we become endangered. Every snail from the beginning of the raining season to the end of the season can lay an average of 400 eggs which for some time will still outnumber their catch. One last characteristic about us, we are hermaphrodite and nocturnal. Do you know what these two terms mean? Thanks for listening. Your hurting snail Sinai

If you are a snail what is ONE thing you will change in your life?
Part Three
Share your short story with us-
Take a look at the following images and create a story around it
In your story list tell us the name of the image, dangers that image faces and how we can help make life better.
Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Base on your story what can listeners do to bring change to improve life in general for the main character in the picture you chose.
CONCLUSION
This lesson intends to inspire program facilitators to tell make storytelling one of the integral parts of After School Program delivery for diverse group of children. Hopefully, the participants can build on these tools to develop their language usage skills and become storytellers in future.