A story gives students something worth communicating. Characters have problems to solve, events unfold, and listeners want to know what happens next. For second language learners, this shared purpose creates valuable opportunities to use language with meaning.
Within AIM’s literacy approach, stories become very familiar, because they eventually become performed as theatre pieces and activities centred around the story connect listening, speaking, reading and writing. With the support of AIM’s unique Gesture approach, dramatization and the pleasant repetition that it offers naturally, our carefully scaffolded activities support students’ understanding of a story before retelling it, adapting it and creating stories of their own.
The value of this work extends beyond the language classroom.
Here are eight important ways AIM storytelling contributes to learning across the curriculum.
1. Developing circumlocution to keep communication going
What happens when a student has an idea but does not know the exact word needed to express it? The speaker must use the language s/he has with which to communicate.
This skill is called circumlocution: using familiar words to describe something when the precise word is unavailable. A language learner who cannot remember “basket,” for example, might say, “the thing she uses to carry the food.”
AIM teachers model this strategy during story retelling and encourage students to retell a familiar story that they know intimately well, without repeating any sentences exactly as they appear in the original story. Instead of stopping whenever a word is missing, learners practise making their meaning clear with the language they already have.
Across the curriculum, this resourcefulness supports explaining ideas, clarifying meaning and approaching unfamiliar vocabulary with greater confidence.
2. Creating purposeful opportunities for cooperative learning
Stories give students a shared task.
Students practise listening to suggestions, taking turns, negotiating choices and working towards a shared result. Cooperation also gives language an immediate purpose. Students need to understand one another to discuss ways to retell a story.
Of course, these important skills are transferable across the curriculum, whether students are planning a science presentation, discussing a text or completing a group inquiry.
3. Connecting oral and written language development
Through AIM Story Retelling activities, speaking and writing can develop together. Students hear and use language orally, encounter it in print and draw on that familiarity when they write.
For example, partners discuss as they come up with ideas as to how to retell the story in their own words, determine how to add detail and correctly sequence the story. Reading the draft aloud can then help them notice a missing event or a sentence that needs clarification. Revising the written version gives them material for further oral practice as well as supporting developing editing skills.
The alternating between between speaking, reading and writing helps students connect what they can say with what they can express in written form. Oral rehearsal provides a useful starting point for writing, while written work helps students organize and refine what they want to say.
The same process can support explaining a scientific observation, preparing a social studies presentation or writing about anything in their first language literacy program.
4. Strengthening comprehension through Oral Story Retelling
AIM’s Story Retelling process asks students to recall the sequence and details of a story a without repeating any sentence as it appears in the original story. In one version, students do this exclusively orally. They must identify the characters, explain the problem, select important events and show how the story resolves.
The Story Retelling can also reveal understanding that a short answer may leave hidden. Does the student understand why a character acted? Can the listener follow the connection between the problem and the ending?
Pictures, gestures, key words and partner practice can provide support as students learn to retell with increasing independence. The goal is to help learners reconstruct meaning in their own words rather repeat memorized lines.
This practice supports the ability to summarize a reading, recount an experience and explain information clearly in other subjects.
5. Offering valuable opportunities for sustained speech
Oral retelling has a particular strength: it gives students a reason to keep speaking beyond a single sentence.
A story has a direction. Once students begin, they have characters, events and a resolution to communicate. A familiar narrative – the story focus of each AIM Kit - offers a framework that can help them link ideas and provide an anchor or touch point.
Teachers can gradually increase the challenge—from retelling one scene to recounting the whole story. As learners become more secure, supports can be reduced.
These opportunities for sustained speech help students practise holding the floor, connecting ideas and keeping an audience engaged. Those abilities are valuable for presentations, explanations and classroom discussions across the curriculum.
6. Building the ability to sequence ideas and events
For a story to make sense, events need a clear order. Students must consider what happened first, what followed and what the audience needs to know before the next event.
Sequencing activities might involve arranging pictures, reconstructing a mixed-up narrative and using connecting language such as “first,” “then,” “after that”, “because” and “finally.” Students can also explore the difference between an event that happens next and an event that happens as a result.
This work develops an important foundation for organized thinking. Practice with sequencing in an AIM classroom helps students in other areas of the curriculum describe the steps in a procedure, explain a mathematical process, recount historical events and structure a piece of writing.
Through Story Retelling, students practise making the order of their thinking visible to others.
7. Teaching students how to add meaningful detail
A basic story provides a structure that students can learn to enrich. Once the main events are clear and students understand AIM’s basic process of Story Retelling, in upper level Kits, teachers can help learners consider what the audience still needs to understand.
Where does the action take place? How does the character feel? Why does the character make that choice? What happens between two events? What is the setting like? What are the characters expressions or what are they wearing?
For example, “The girl goes to the house” might become, “The girl goes quickly to her grandmother’s house because she is worried.” The added detail communicates manner, relationship and motivation.
The goal is purposeful elaboration. Students learn to choose details that clarify an idea, develop a character or explain an action.
This attention to the listener/reader’s needs also supports descriptive writing, fuller explanations and clearer responses in other subjects.
8. Giving students an authentic audience for their work
Stories are made to be shared. Providing opportunities to read a story to students in their own or another class gives students a concrete reason to prepare, revise and practise.
Students may need to make their writing clear enough for younger listeners, rehearse expressive reading or prepare illustrations that support understanding. Afterwards, questions from the audience/the partner can show them which parts were especially engaging and which needed more explanation.
Sharing also gives students an opportunity to see themselves as authors with something to contribute. Their work becomes part of an exchange with real readers and listeners.
Across the curriculum, this experience supports presentation skills, attention to audience and care in preparing work for others.
AIM Story Retelling and Story Extension brings these contributions together within a connected literacy experience. Students cooperate to develop ideas, rehearse them aloud, organize them in writing and share them with an audience. Each stage gives the next stage a purpose.
When learners have a story they understand and want to tell, they have meaningful reasons to stretch their language. In doing so, they practise ways of thinking, communicating and working with others that serve them throughout the school day.
AIM offers purposeful writing opportunities
AIM Student Publishing Context for Story Extensions (not Story Retellings)
Consider holding a contest within your class or school-wide for the best Story Extensions!
Submit up to two winners from your school to our AIM Student Publishing Contest for the opportunity to have their books professionally published and win prizes for their classroom, as well as an honorarium. Click HERE for more information.
