Although various reasons have been proposed to explain the potential effectiveness of science stories to promote learning, no explicit relationship of stories to learning theory in science has been propounded. In this paper, two structurally analogous models are developed and compared: a structural model of stories and a temporal conceptual change…

Purpose: This study investigated the expressive elaboration of narratives from children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method: Forty-eight 6- and 8-year-old children with SLI were compared with forty-eight 6- and 8-year-old typical language (TL) children. Two imaginative narratives were scored for 14 elements of expressive elaboration in…

To encourage children's creative writing in a classroom setting, student teachers used two types of children's books as models: (1) a traditionally structured picture book in which the story maintains strong development of plot, setting, and characters as in "Peter Rabbit"; and (2) a predictable pattern book that develops a repetitive pattern as…

Proceeding from a definition of "story schema" as an idealized internal representation of the parts of a typical story and the relationships among those parts, this paper explores the role of story schemata in reading comprehension. The paper also identifies variables that may affect the way in which schemata function and outlines the…