By Femi Abegunde
Champions International Schools have organized a storytelling gathering to heighten critical thinking ability among students from Basic 1 to JSS 3 classes in the open ground of the Junior college.
Storytelling has been one of the oldest means of acquiring knowledge and instilling moral values that are embedded in African cultural heritage. It is a social and cultural activity of sharing stories that entertain and educate.
The Director of Studies, Mr Fola Adekeye, while speaking with the pupils on Friday, shared the importance of storytelling which are imaginary power to think, emotional intelligence for empathy, good language use for effective communication, and story-setting relationship promotion. These he attributed to reasons stories are told.
According to him, “The small wise snail”, a story which he later told the students, was a story told by his mother about how Tortoise believed he was the wisest and ended up being given the best advice of his life by a snail. He therefore encouraged parents to employ this act of storytelling to their wards.
Mr Fola shared the story of Prophet Elisha in the Bible and its significance was discussed. He then asked for feedback from the students about the lessons learnt. “The story taught us not to be hot tempered,” a student said. “We should never mock elderly people or anybody in life,” said another student.
Towards the end, other moral-filled stories, evoking detailed and lively pictures of animal fantasies were told by the DS and two other staff, Miss Tracy and Mr Temitope. Onovo chisom, Oreye David, Adeleke Tiwatope, and Adeniran Adeshewa in JSS 2, JSS 1, JSS 1 and Basic 1, also told their fictitious stories with respect.
Edited by Lawrence Adesola
