Storyline

Storyline is the first subject area that we will be learning about during this elective. It is due to span over five inputs where the class will work through a Storyline to gain insight into what it is and how to do it. For me this is a good way to learn about a new subject as I will be involved in the making of it instead of hearing about someone else’s experiences. Storyline was new to me, so I thought I should do background reading to gain a clearer idea of what it is. 

What is Storyline?

In Scotland in the mid 1960’s the Primary Memorandum recommended a curriculum that included integrated areas of study. In 1967 in Glasgow an inservice staff tutor team was formed to help teachers experiment with topic studies as a form of integration. It is here that Storyline was created by Steven Bell, Sallie Harkness and Fred Rendell. It fell out of fashion in the 1980’s when the Scottish curriculum changed to a more subject-based design where integration was not encouraged. Despite the lack of popularity of Storyline in Scotland at this time, it was kept alive in many other countries and now has a growing international reputation in countries such as Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, USA and Thailand. Now Scotland has a new ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ which once again encompasses the storyline philosophy of holistic and thematic approaches to learning and teaching.

Storyline is a teaching methodology comprising of a partnership between the teacher and the learners. “Storyline provides a cross curricular, topic based method of teaching that uses the structure of a story to enable the teacher and pupils to co-construct the curriculum,” Bell and Harkness (2006, p.2). The story itself is used as a context for learning in which the teacher plans the line, or chapters, which contain the learning intentions and the learners create the story and take it further, providing them with ownership. The ownership of the learners is important as I believe this will motivate them as they become emotionally and intellectually involved. The line is designed in the form of key questions which encourage the learners to create the characters, setting and events. Various educators believe that learning in this way is more likely to result in deep learning, which is one of the principles of Curriculum for Excellence.

Storyline sounds good in theory, but I am not sure all teachers are able to carry it out effectively. To promote a creative classroom does not just happen overnight. For some children this will be a wonderful and exciting opportunity, but for the small group of children who feel they lack the ability to be creative, this could seem like their worst nightmare. I was one of these children, but through my experiences and reading I realise that everyone has the natural ability to be creative it just gets lost somewhere along the way and they lack the confidence to lose their inhibitions and let their creativity flow. This said I still do not feel very creative, but the difference is that I know it is in there somewhere. I believe that for teachers to make this work the most important thing is to provide the right atmosphere for children, to feel safe, secure and understand that by making mistakes is how we learn. Robinson advocates that, “if you are not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original” (TEDtalksdirector, 2007). I think that this is the key, to provide children with the type of environment that promotes this and in turn will help them to have the confidence to open up and be creative.

References

Bell, S. and Harkness, S. (2006) Storyline - Promoting Language Accross the Curriculum. Hertfordshire: UKL.

TEDtalksdirector (2007) Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY (Accessed: 9 October 2011).