Learn Through Stories: Let Me Tell You a Story

By Guest Author, Janet Yamaguchi

I just recently returned from Alaska where the air was cold and the streets were slick with snow and ice. While I was there, I took my toddler with me to the grocery store to pick up a few items for lunch and snacks for the road. When we left the store, the shopping cart was full of groceries and my bundled-up daughter. I pushed the heavily laden cart to my car and as I turned away from the cart to open the car door and put the first bag of groceries onto the floorboard, the unwatched shopping cart began to roll away, down the icy, sloped parking lot. Needless to say, I was frantic! I noticed that not only were the cart and my toddler travelling quickly down the lot, but they were about to collide with a parked car! And I thought, “As heavy as that cart is and as fast as it is travelling, it’s going to transfer a large amount of energy to that parked car, which in turn will impart a correspondingly large amount of energy to the shopping cart and my young daughter.…..”
 
In fact, this is not a true story, but I use it to introduce the concept of “energy transfer” when I’m teaching others. It has proven to be a very effective and memorable story, even though it’s untrue. The story continues (with no harm to the imaginary toddler), weaving in associated science concepts, while also compelling the listeners to internalize (understand and remember) these science concepts, such as how a change of incline, speed, and/or the coefficient of friction, relates to a change in energy transfer. So, what is it that compels the listener to learn and apply these complex physical science concepts to other aspects of real life? Because of the psychology associated with hearing the phrase “Let me tell you a story.”


Science has yielded some fascinating insights into the way our brains respond to stories. Researchers at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, have studied the levels of brain activity while participants read excerpts from a story, aloud, to a group of listeners. They discovered that far from just passively listening to the story, the participants were living the experiences alongside the character in the story. For example, neurons in those areas of the brain that are related to grasping and other movements of the hand, lit up when the character in the story picked up, held, or pushed an object. Neurons, related to vision, fired as the character looked around. Even more interesting: both the reader and the listener experienced similar patterns of brain activation during this activity and also when they told, and listened to, unrehearsed stories from their own and other people’s lives, respectively.

 

A cartoon image of brain “coupling” during communication (credit: Drexel University)

The researchers suggested that in order to better comprehend a story, we ground the activities about which we’re hearing within our own real-world experiences. These findings show the incredible influence that storytelling can have. An effective story can not only sweep up the listener and cause them to vicariously live the tale, it can cause the listener to store this narrative as a memory that can easily be retrieved. Storytelling, especially when introduced by the simple phrase, “Let me tell you a story,” is a powerful method of teaching and subsequent learning. Listeners will absorb the story and be ready to apply (which is evidence of learning) the information, concepts, and/or message that you want to impart.


Whatever story you might tell, whether from your own life, your imagination, or a treasured storybook, know how impactful it can be when told aloud. If you then go to the next step and follow-up with a related, hands-on activity, whether science, math, engineering, or art-based, you can be assured that the introduced concept will be applied by the learner in a most effective way. Why? Because someone listened when you told them a story.


And the most valuable lesson learned here is: put the toddler in the car first, before the groceries.
 
A supporting scholarly article  ~ The Science Behind The Art Of Storytelling


A cartoon image of brain “coupling” during communication  ~  Brain-imaging headband measures how our minds mirror a speaker when we communicate

Guest Author, Janet Yamaguchi

Janet Yamaguchi’s background includes a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from California State University, Fullerton and 36 years of teaching experience: four years as a high school science teacher; eight years with the Orange County Department of Education; and twenty-four years with Discovery Science Center/Discovery Cube as Vice President, Education.


While working for Discovery Cube, Ms. Yamaguchi served on several advisory boards, including the MacMillan, McGraw-Hill Textbook Publishing Company (2006-08); and wrote middle school science labs for Holt, McDougal Textbook Publishing Company (2009). She served on the Science Review Team and the Science Expert Panel for the California Department of Education (2011-2013) in order to modify and edit the nationally developed Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for the State of California and in 2014, she was appointed by the CA Department of Education to the 20-person Strategic Leadership Team that created the statewide plan for implementing the CA-NGSS.


Before retiring from the science center in 2017, Ms. Yamaguchi was awarded the 2017 National Science Teachers’ Association’s “Distinguished Informal Science Educator” Award.