Mini-lessons at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels help teachers weave storytelling into the fabric of today's standards-based classroom and construct their own skillful literacy lessons. Reluctant and striving readers and writers, English language learners, and even more advanced storytellers will love the confidence they gain as they move from developing to delivering a variety of stories for a variety of audiences. Teachers will love the many benefits of "performance literacy," or teaching children how to write and perform stories:

[[ Develop literacy skillslanguage, vocabulary, comprehension, writing process, speaking, and listeningalong with performance skills and self-expression;

[[ Easily integrate learning across the content areas;

[[ Deepen the connection between home, school, and community;

[[ Promote students' creativity and activate their prior knowledge;

[[ Encourage respect and self-improvement as students learn to critique each other's stories and performances in a non-threatening manner.

Developing Literacy Through Storytelling comes complete with a story index, curriculum tie-ins, digital storytelling tips, and information for using the companion website with supplemental multimedia. An audio CD includes more than 70 minutes of stories and songs from the authors themselves, in addition to other well-known storytellers, performers, and educators: Karen Alexander, John Archambault, David Plummer, HeatherForest, Brenda Hollingsworth-Marley, Gene Tagaban, and Allan Wolf.

Don't just teach literacyperform it!