Forty-six Spanish-speaking children ages four, six, or eight years viewed a short silent film and told what happened in the film. The stories of older children included more narrative actions, more mental state/goal causes, more three-clause causal sequences, and a lower proportion of unrelated statements than those of younger children.…

This study of the story composition abilities of 46 students (aged 11-14) with learning disabilities found that subjects had a rudimentary knowledge of story form, but this knowledge was less developed than that of their nondisabled peers. Subjects also had greater coherence problems in their writing and were less fluent writers. (Author/JDD)

This multiple baseline study investigated the effectiveness of direct instruction of an advanced story-map procedure on the reading comprehension performance of six middle school students with learning disabilities (LD). Results indicated an increase in story grammar and basal comprehension performance generalization to a novel passage, and…

Investigates fifth-grade children's expectations for stories in relation to knowledge of literature/reading ability. Shows "high readers" included more high-level story propositions and structurally important story information than did low readers; students who included structurally important story information scored higher on knowledge…

Discusses extending the "Witch's Hat" technique with the Problem-Solution pattern and the dialog projection technique to help learners comprehend and produce basic narrative discourse in English by developing awareness of the rhetorical structure of stories. Discusses benefits of the combined strategy. (RS)

The authors report data from a longitudinal study that addresses the relations between working memory capacity and reading comprehension skills in children aged 8, 9, and 11 years. At each time point, the authors assessed children's reading ability, vocabulary and verbal skills, performance on 2 working memory assessments (sentence-span and digit…

This study investigated written language production in 10-year-old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading, these children are poor at understanding what they read. Participants completed a spelling test, and were asked to write an extended narrative, prompted by a series of pictures. Poor comprehenders…

This qualitative study uses an analysis of literature circle discussions to illuminate larger issues of gender and social class for a group of fifth-grade students. By examining how four students were positioned and positioned themselves within these literature conversations, I demonstrate that the roles reproduced certain gender- and…

This study investigated the possibility that direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelations could enhance children's organization in story writing. It also investigated whether the special instruction might affect quality, coherence, use of temporal and casual relations, and creativity in writing. (Author/JAZ)

Story structure instruction, focusing on forming a mental picture of a story's structure and understanding of story parts, improved poor-reading fourth-graders' (N=20) story writing skills in terms of organization and overall quality but not coherence and creativity, indicating that instruction in story parts can improve some children's writing.…

Examines the use of the Herringbone technique as a writing tool with fourth-grade children. Notes that the Herringbone technique provides students with a structure for identifying and organizing important story elements and observing relationships when reading or writing. Demonstrates that the Herringbone strategy is a useful tool for effective…

Illustrates the elements of story structure (beginning, middle, and end) by discussing excerpts from children's literature. Provides an annotated bibliography of picture books for each element, elementary classroom activities, and writing exercises. (PEN)

Studied effects of explicit reading comprehension instruction on low-performing ninth grade students' ability to comprehend short stories. Interactive instructional method was used to teach students a strategy based on story grammar for comprehending and analyzing complex short stories. (DG)

An instructional strategy for teaching comprehension of literature was tested with seven high school students with learning disabilities. The strategy taught story grammar through use of short stories and the paradigm of modeling/guided practice/independent practice. Students showed improved story comprehension. (Author/JDD)

Shares the experiences of telling stories to three-year-old Tim, who began to take over parts of the stories to tell himself. Suggests that, by making storytelling an interactive event, adults can help children feel comfortable enough in storytelling to be confident of their own emergent narrative ability. (MG)