What To Do With a Squirrelly Audience? Some Techniques For Young Audiences

Squirrelly Audience? (source)

Every now and then you get a young audience that has no interest in sitting still. They squirm, giggle, and play with their neighbors. They are clearly unfocused and not in a space for some telling.

They are usually pretty easy to spot the moment you come into the room. There is a restlessness with them that you can feel.





There are lots of possible reasons that they are squirrelly.

Halloween Trivia?

- Are they excited because you are really near a holiday of some kind and they can barely hold themselves together?

- Have they just gotten back from a holiday and they are still feeling loose?

- Is this the first assembly of the year and they need to learn/relearn proper behavior?

- Is this a school that rarely gets assemblies and they have little experience with being an audience?


- Are you in a school with students who speak lots of different languages and many of the kids don't understand you?


You start the storytelling, and you can tell that only part of the audience is listening.

I faced such a group this morning. There were almost four hundred Kindergarten, first, and second graders on the floor in the gym.

They really wanted to be at recess, running up and down the halls, or possibly in gym class. Instead, they were in a space where they normally got to run around and play, but they were sitting together for something different.


How do you deal with an audience that starts like this for whatever reason?


Suggestion 1 - Use The Pack To Overwhelm The Individual

I make sure that the stories I am presenting are VERY interactive.

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Young audiences have various abilities when it comes to listening silently.

Group participation tends to make even the daydreamers pay attention just so they can say the silly things, do the gestures, and be part of the group.

That goes a long way in gathering up the wanderers to become part of the telling community.




Suggestion 2 - You Can Use Some Simple Disciplinary Practices

If I see lots of poking or playing with each other before I begin, I call the behavior out upfront.

-Okay, everybody, let's keep your hands to yourself. If you play with your neighbor or forget your assembly behavior I will have you go and sit next to your teacher.

I try to catch the eye of the disruptor as I tell. I also try to give them a chance to make better choices.

Most of the time I don't have to move anyone, but sometimes I do. I ask them to go and sit by their teacher. I only do this with students who are so disruptive they are causing a small circle of distraction.

Today I ended up moving three kids. The rest of the audience calmed down after that.

Suggestion 3 - Give Them A Wiggle Break

My pre-k through second-grade set has a built-in wiggle break.

The stretch break involves the whole body so that each kid can participate to the best of their ability. There is an upper and lower body activity. I encourage the teachers to get into it as well.

I get them to march, breathe, stretch, dance about and follow visual and audio cues. I try to make it fun.


Sometimes the answer is that your young audience has not dealt with storytelling and doesn't really know what is expected of them.

Novice listeners might need some basic storytelling training.
You consume music and dance differently than sitting and listening to the spoken word without a book. Engaging their imagination without puppetry, costumes, or music could be a new experience for them.

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The first story might be a little rocky, but with a little exposure, they crack the code.

Picking great stories helps!


Suggestion 4 - Make Sure You Offer Different Levels of Listening, Participation, and Action During The Performance.

When choosing stories for a wiggly audience, I look for tales that have lots of participation both physical and vocal.

I recommend stories that incorporate intensity, silence, and non-pedestrian sound for different levels of involvement. It is amazing how quickly they look up if you go completely silent! These are great techniques to catch their attention.

Hand gestures, call and response, physical cues, voices, rhythms, rhymes, and repetition are all good choices. Oh, and don't forget that three minute or so wiggle break! It will make all the difference.

Good Luck!

Strap in and enjoy the ride!

Happy Telling!

Tales From The Trenches: Telling It In Schools

photo credit

Telling stories in schools is not for the faint of heart.  After twenty-seven years of touring and telling, I still have days where I see things I have never seen before. 

Sometimes I don’t think you could pay me enough to do what I do, and other times I really ought to be paying the school because I learned so much from their students.

All of these things happened this week….

I worked with kids who have never had an assembly at their school, and not only did they not know how to behave, they didn’t even really get the concept of what we were all doing there for the first ten minutes.  After that, they settled in and were mostly quiet.  They stared at me in confusion for a big chunk of time, but they did listen.  By the end, I think most of them decided they enjoyed the storytelling.  Either way, the sixth graders waved at me like three year olds when they saw me in the hall as I walked out of the building.

I encountered kids who clearly go to the theatre all of the time as well as symphonies and opera, and asked cogent questions about what sort of art they would be watching.

After a particularly difficult show with third through sixth graders, a fifth grade group came into the gym as I was packing, and asked if I’d tell them one more story before class started.  Taught them Johnny and Suzy thumb.  They were over the moon.  The gym teacher didn’t rush them.  In fact, he stood there grinning the entire time, not even caring they were eating into his class time.  Score.

One school informed me that their lunchtime started about ten minutes into my set, and they were going to have to take a couple of classrooms out of the assembly at that time.  Oh, and after that, every five minutes another group was going to have to leave.  That wasn’t going to be a problem, right?

At another school, all of the work I do tying the stories into character ed was for naught since not a single teacher attended the set, and only one person stayed behind to monitor the kids.  The kids were good, of course, but half of the assembly is lost when there is no chance that the teachers can do any follow up at all.

I got an unanticipated, spontaneous standing ovation from a first grade class.  First time in my life six year olds have given me that sort of response.

Had an arts representative pre-book me for the following year before I left the building.

Had a principal tell me that she didn’t care how close we were to the dismissal bell, she wanted me to tell one more story…and I did.

Worked in schools where the audience was attentive and it was easy.

Worked in schools where the audience had to be convinced that watching was worth their while, and I earned every penny.

Did I succeed in all I wanted to do?  Nope.

Did I share an arts experience with lots of kids?  Yes.

Did I have some fabulous sets that were absolutely perfect, and I felt like a magic person when I left the building?  Yes.  As I always say, sometimes things go well, but every now and then I totally rock!

Did I touch at least one kid’s imagination or spark of creativity in some very important or special way?  Who knows?

Did I convince one kid that if they have a dream that is big enough they should follow it?  I hope so.

Either way, here are some simple rules of thumb I follow that have served me well.

1)   Record the stories you tell in each venue.   You can either use your computer, or some kind of diary. (I save the information in an EXCEL spreadsheet.)  I know that some tellers use journals, but I’m too prone to lose something like that.  I type in the name of the school, the year, the month, grade-levels I saw, and what I told them.

2)   Because I see many schools multiple years, I have also put together some story sets that last exactly 45 minutes.  They are prepackaged stories, and I’ve divided them into ‘set years’.   So, the first time I visit, your school gets this set, the second time, a different set, and so on and so forth.  It means that I can control the time as well as having stories that I know work well for different grade levels.  I start the rotation again after about four years.

3)   Know that sometimes your set years aren’t going to work because of unanticipated events.  i.e. ‘We’ve decided to add the sixth grade to your K – 2 assembly, that’s all right, isn’t it?’  So make sure you have other alternatives, and be flexible!

4)   Be very polite to the office staff and the custodians.

5)   Ask about the school before you begin.  Find out if there is anything the students are dealing with, or if there are any concerns the staff might have.  You should also find out what the staff members consider their strengths.  As you tell, consider the things they’ve told you, and you can work their concerns and strengths into your stories.  I also ask about reading levels and what sorts of things the kids like.

6)   Teachers work hard.  Give them a break, but invite them to participate with the kids.  Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t.  Invite them anyway.

7)   Carry hand sanitizer with you because kids want to touch you and there is no telling where their little hands have been right before that.

8)   Adjust to your audience; don’t expect them to adjust to you!

9)   Don’t be afraid to call out a kid who is misbehaving.  If the teachers are really focused on you, they won’t necessarily be paying attention to the kids.

10)                    Remember, you are going to have bad days.  Learn from them, and keep on going.

So, eight elementary schools in four days, and tomorrow I begin a tour through middle schools that will last through next Friday.

The work is challenging, interesting and soul satisfying.  Oh, and you can get paid to do it!

It doesn’t get better than that.

Happy Telling!