A whale of a problem

“The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere.”

YouTube is a great source of inspiration for stories which can be used in the classroom. My favourite clip of the moment is the short documentary about the exploding whale which can be seen below.

Now although this clip has worked well with most of my classes, there have been one or two individuals who weren’t so keen on it. Perhaps it’s not in the best of taste but it’s certainly memorable and that’s the payoff (and your warning!)

For a number of years, the 1970 exploding whale incident was commonly believed to be an urban legend. Then two decades later, Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry reported that he had footage of it. This, of course, found its way onto YouTube. The story has its own entry on Wikipedia (click here) and even its own website.

Storytelling format

When I think back to my school days, I remember a time when we were habitually asked to sit around the teacher and listen to a story. Sometimes the story was read from a book but often not.

Sometimes we were encouraged to ask questions, give opinions, predict outcomes, etc, but not everyone would want to interact. Some of us were happy just to listen.

Importantly, the teacher never seemed to worry about his or her ‘talk time’ being too high and for this format to work in the language classroom, neither should we. Perhaps more important than TTT (teacher talk time) are the likes of:

• Being understood (choice of language, talking clearly, at a suitable pace, using body language, concept checking, repetition, etc)
• Being engaging (this can depend on the teacher’s enthusiasm, choice of story, etc)

The format described here may be associated with young learners. But there is no reason that it can’t be used with adults as is the case with my own classes.

Preparation

For this activity, you will have to get to know the story as well as possible and memorize all relevant facts that relate to it. If you wanted to use the exploding whale story, for example, you could make the following notes:

• Florence, Oregon (on the North West coast of USA)
• November 12^th, 1970
• Beached sperm whale (mistakenly reported to be a grey whale)
• Length: 45 feet / 14 meters
• Weight: 8 tonnes
• Oregon Highway Division (department responsible for cleanup)
• George Thornton (engineer in charge of the operation)
• Half a tonne of dynamite (20 cases)
• Thought that disintegrated pieces would be picked up by seagulls and other scavengers
• Dynamite buried so that whale would should have been thrown towards the sea
• Bystanders (about 75, mostly curious residents) moved a quarter of a mile away
• Heavy damage to a parked car
• Everyone covered with small particles of whale
• No one hurt

Before going into class, practise telling the story to a couple of friends and see how they react to it. Aim to be able to tell the story without reading your notes (this can compromise the ambience of a storytelling).

Starting the story

Tell your students that you want to tell them a story. This might be enough to raise their curiosity and get them interested. Get them to rearrange seating if it is necessary and if it seems natural to do so.

You can start of by showing an image - something central to the story but which won’t reveal the juicy parts. For example, show students a screen capture from the clip - a picture of George Thornton, the engineer in charge of the explosion would be good.

“I’m going to tell you a story which involves this man. What do you think he does? When do you think the picture was taken?”

Student interaction

From my experience as a teacher trainer, I have seen many cases when trainee teachers talk to students but fail to communicate with them. Unclear instructions can be one outcome of this problem.

To deal with this, I sometimes give trainees the following task:

1. Think of exactly what you are going to say to your students (the instructions you are going to give them, for example) and write it all down, word for word.
2. Now look at what you have written and for each statement you make or instruction you give, think of a question to ask your students.

Similarly, it can be good to have an idea of a few possible questions to ask students during the storytelling:

• So imagine you were in charge of getting rid of the whale. What do you think your options would be?
• So you could bury it - any disadvantages with that?
• So they moved the bystanders a quarter of a mile away from the explosion. What do you think of that - is it far enough? 

Encourage students to ask questions, give opinions and predict outcomes whenever possible.

Problematic language

You can preteach unknown vocabulary but I prefer to introduce, clarify and write it up on the board as and when it comes into the story.

The same same applies to any good grammatical structures. For example:

“The bystanders were asked to move a quarter of a mile from the whale.”

This sentence contains a lot of good grammar. Don’t be scared to repeat it a few times to your students and then ask them to say it back to you - more valuable interaction!

Revision

Look out for any vocabulary or structures that your students have recently met and draw their attention to them along the way.

After the story

It is impossible to say how long the story telling activity will take. It could be anything from 5 minutes to an hour. this will depend on your pace, student interaction and digression (which can be good in some cases).

Following the storytelling, show your students the YouTube clip. Alternatively, email them the link. It is not necessary to give any additional tasks at this stage. Most students will be engaged enough with the story to want to see the clip.

In the case of the exploding whale clip, the quality of the audio is a bit poor and students can be reminded not to worry too much about the commentary. A transcript can be obtained here.

Follow up tasks

• Students can be asked to write George Thornton’s report for his boss for that eventful day at work.
• Students role play a telephone call between the unfortunate car owner and his/her insurance company.
• Take a note of all the new structures that came up, wipe the board clean, and dictate them to your students.

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Perhaps the exploding whale story was the inspiration from this scene from Will Smith’s (otherwise bad) Hancock

If you haven’t had enough exploding wales for one day, another one can be seen here.

For more on YouTube stories, click here.

Posted by admin on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 9:08 pm.