STORY MAPPING

Jamal Maringo 

Types of story mapping activities that a teacher can use in the class

Story mapping is the strategy that is used in teaching pupils while performing reading programme. Sorry mapping is normally using visual representations for the sake of helping pupils to organize different and important elements of a story. Through this strategy pupils can improve their ideas, knowing the setting, characters and language used.

I tend to use the story mapping when I teach my pupils of aged 10 to 13 years old, according to our educational system in Tanzania, these ages are in form one to two pupils.  Children love stories, they are always eager to listen to stories. It is quite different with the storybooks that we use here in Tanzania and other countries, I think the books are not similar, we tend to use story books such as ‘Kalulu the Hare, Mabala the farmer. Hawa the Bus Driver and small titled story books that relating with our environment.

Story mapping can be used in all stages of reading, that is, pre reading stage, while and post reading stages respectively, In pre reading stage, I tend to use this strategy by drawing a kind of spider web  that needs pupils to fill in what they know about the story that I am going to tell them. For example,if I want to teach my pupils using a story of “A hyena and Rabbit” I can ask them to guess by filling in the gaps in the spider web on what they expect to hear from me. Then I start to read the story and they correct themselves on what they did previously, this strategy enhances creativity and attentiveness of the pupils.

In while reading stage, story map can also be used. This is a proper method of finding characters with their qualities, pupils in groups will fill in the gaps that make the story impressive, at the end the groups will discuss together to get correct answers.

In fact story mapping is very effective while teaching reading, as it tends to explore a lot of information from the learners that can be helpfull to them. Again learners feel free to fill in what they are directed to do, this explores their curiosity and creativity.