In this study particular practices in story retelling ware examined, these improved children's comprehension of story structure and enabled them to made comments within and beyond the story. One hundred fifteen (115) kindergarten children composed the treatment and alternative condition. For 8 weeks and for one time per week, 8 well-structured as…

This study examines how pre-readers' comprehension of story read-alouds is affected when story goal structure deviates from the canonical event. Forty children (30-59 months) were read stories in which there was either a match or mismatch between story and event goal structure. Children's content comprehension scores for the matched story (M =…

The purpose of this study was to explore pre-readers' comprehension of a story with competing character goals. Fifty-eight children in three age groups (2½-3 years; 3-4 years; and 4-5 years) were read a story in which the protagonist's goal was unstated and conflicted with the goal of the secondary character. Understanding of explicit story…

This early-stage feasibility study investigated the effects of a multitiered oral narrative language intervention on oral language, reading comprehension, and writing. Twenty-eight second-grade students participated in this quasi-experimental control group study with assignment at the classroom level. The independent variable was large- and…

During narrative comprehension, reading times increase for changes in time, space, characters, goals, and causation. This study examined the extent to which instructional manipulations modify dimension monitoring during reading and whether this affects comprehension. Sixty-seven participants read three narratives (pretest). Half of the…

The purpose of this study was to rate oral retellings of fifth graders to determine how passages, raters, and rating occasions affect those ratings, and to identify what combination of those elements produce reliable retelling ratings. A group of 36 fifth grade students read and orally retold three contemporary realistic fiction passages. Two…

Story structure is how humans think. If school librarians help students master the elements that define this story structure, then students can be assisted in efficiently and effectively mastering both reading comprehension and all forms of writing. Without exception and without equivocation, research studies conducted over the past quarter…

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to examine how children with isolated speech sound disorders (SSDs; n = 20), children with combined SSDs and language impairment (LI; n = 20), and typically developing children (n = 20), ages 3;3 (years;months) to 6;6, differ in narrative ability. The second purpose was to determine if early narrative…

Purpose: The script frameworks model (R. Schank, 1975) and causal network model (T. Trabasso & L. Sperry, 1985) were used to assess script-based story retellings of children with and without language impairments (LI). When retelling scripts and stories, children developing typically include (a) more obligatory than optional elements, with few…

Story retelling in which the child retells a story he has read has been used to effectively assess and improve reading comprehension, knowledge of story schema, and communication skills in elementary students with hearing impairments at the Kendall Demonstration Elementary School in Washington, D.C. (DB)

A study investigated both quantitative and qualitative differences between learning disabled (LD) and nonlearning disabled (NLD) subjects across three grade levels on two tasks requiring active processing of story grammar. Twelve LD and 12 NLD subjects were randomly selected from grades 4-5, 7-8, and 10-11 in a southwestern Florida school…

This study investigated the relationship between reading comprehension and oral storytelling abilities in 31 Latino junior high school students with learning handicaps. Although comparison of the standard scoring protocol and reading comprehension revealed no relationship, a significant correlation was found between story structure analysis and…

A study examined whether text structures were included in the "oral" videotaped retellings of a second grader with deafness across 28 texts. Improvements in the child's ability to include specific elements of text structures were documented over nine months. A 12-month increase in reading ability and narrative ability was also documented.…

Rita is a Pacific island grade 2 teacher in a local village school. She has established a 90-minute daily literacy block in which she focuses on literacy-related activities. As she sits with her students during the literacy block, she realizes some of them are having difficulty comprehending text, and many are unable to retell the stories…

Describes the benefits that storytelling can have on the development of listening and reading comprehension and the enhancement of oral and written expression. Presents an example of how storytelling was used to realize these benefits in a third-grade classroom. (MG)