Handbook for teachers

Author: DIVERSE Consortium, EU

This handbook has been developed in the framework of the transnational project DIVERSE (“Promotion of democratic values and diversity in schools through Creative Drama and Fairy Tales”) which is co-funded in the framework of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.

This handbook is written for primary and secondary education teachers. It aims to support you to improve the management of diversity in your classroom, introducing three storytelling techniques:

Drama in Education engages learners in fiction they create themselves, exploring issues they may be experiencing. Drama creates a space for participants to understand the world in which they live.

Digital storytelling uses multimedia elements such as photographs, videos, sounds, texts and narrative voices. 

Folktales draw on oral traditions of the world, such as legends, myths, fables, parables, allegories, fairy tales, ghost stories and many others.

Our consortium believes that all three methods are excellent ways to manage and embrace diversity in your classroom. Based on our experience, pupils really enjoy working with methods based on storytelling. With such techniques, you will be able to convey your teaching goal and discuss sensitive issues in a way that pupils won’t even recognize they are learning.

Each method is presented in a similar structure:

• Introduction to theory: the theoretical groundings of the method.
• Description of the methodology: a general introduction into the know-how.
• Lesson plans to try with your class, with plenty of explanations. Examples of using the method in different contexts and with different age groups.
• Some further tools: some further techniques and tips you can try.
• References: a rich selection of links, books and articles for the seriously curious.

We hope you find this handbook practical and useful, and it will help you to enrichen your toolkit to manage diversity in your classroom.

You can read the Handbook on the website of DIVERSE project