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Many students struggle to acquire adequate reading comprehension and writing skills. Although word recognition and spelling are needed to fully actualize these skills, the oral language aspects of reading and writing can be taught and practiced without text. Oral storytelling is good for all students, but it may be essential for students with code‐related disabilities and students with limited proficiency in the mainstream academic language of U.S. schools. The purpose of this article is to offer oral storytelling as a versatile classroom‐based approach for advancing diverse students' reading and writing skills, as well as facilitating their social–emotional development. Based on an extensive theoretical and empirical literature, we propose seven strategies teachers can implement to infuse oral storytelling in their classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standards of academic performance place a high demand on students' English language. To help Spanish-speaking preschoolers who are developing English as a second language meet these demands, researchers recommend strengthening their first language to facilitate development of their second language. Head Start teachers and research assistants delivered 12 Spanish and 12 English language lessons to eight preschoolers in small groups. Lessons targeted storytelling and vocabulary and occurred 4 days a week for 20 min. A multiple-baseline experimental design across groups was used to examine the effect of the Spanish–English narrative intervention on children's retelling skills and a pretest posttest design without a control group documented children's acquisition of the target words. Results indicated that children made gains in English retelling while maintaining their already high Spanish retelling skills. Improvements in vocabulary were observed in English but not in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Despite literature showing a correlation between oral language and written language ability, there is little evidence documenting a causal connection between oral and written language skills. The current study examines the extent to which oral language instruction using narratives impacts students' writing skills. Method: Following multiple baseline design conventions to minimize threats to internal validity, 3 groups of 1st-grade students were exposed to staggered baseline, intervention, and maintenance conditions. During the intervention condition, groups received 6 sessions of small-group oral narrative instruction over 2 weeks. Separated in the school day from the instruction, students wrote their own stories, forming the dependent variable across baseline, intervention, and maintenance conditions. Written stories were analyzed for story structure and language complexity using a narrative scoring flow chart based on current academic standards. Results: Corresponding to the onset of oral narrative instruction, all but 1 student showed meaningful improvements in story writing. All 4 students, for whom improvements were observed and maintenance data were available, continued to produce written narratives above baseline levels once the instruction was withdrawn. Conclusions: Results suggest that narrative instruction delivered exclusively in an oral modality had a positive effect on students' writing. Implications include the efficiency and inclusiveness of oral language instruction to improve writing quality, especially for young students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study investigated the classification accuracy of a concentrated English narrative dynamic assessment (DA) for identifying language impairment (LI). Method: Forty-two Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten to third-grade children (10 LI and 32 with no LI) were administered two 25-min DA test-teach-test sessions. Pre- and posttest narrative retells were scored in real time. Using a structured intervention approach, examiners taught children missing story grammar elements and subordination. A posttest was administered using a parallel story. Results: Four classification predictors were analyzed: posttest scores, gain scores, modifiability ratings, and teaching duration. Discriminant function analysis indicated that an overall modifiability rating was the best classifier, with 100% sensitivity and 88% specificity after 1 DA session and 100% sensitivity and specificity after 2 sessions. Any 2 combinations of posttest scores, modifiability ratings, and teaching duration for just 1 session resulted in sensitivity and specificity rates over 90%. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were used to identify clinically usable cutoff points. Post hoc exploration indicated that similar results could be obtained after only one 5-10-min teaching cycle, potentially further abbreviating the DA process. Conclusion: Concentrated English narrative DA results in high classification accuracy for bilingual children with and without LI. This efficient version of DA is amenable to clinical use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral narratives are a commonly used, meaningful means of communication that reflects academic language. New state curriculum standards include narrative-related language expectations for young school-age children, including story grammar and complex language. This article provides a review of preschool narrative-based language intervention studies, with special attention to how the intervention accelerated young children's story grammar and complex language beyond developmental expectations, meeting or even exceeding recently adopted state language standards. In addition, we provide an overview of a narrative-based language intervention used with culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers to prepare them for meeting the language standards in elementary school. Evidence supports a conclusion that personal-themed stories that are developmentally and socially appropriate for preschoolers can strengthen children's use of mainstream story grammar and complex language, which will be an asset to them in elementary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The first purpose of this study was to explore the use of a whole class, test–teach–test, dynamic assessment of narratives for identifying participants. The second purpose was to examine the efficacy of a Tier 2 narrative language intervention for culturally and linguistically diverse preschoolers. Method: A dynamic assessment was conducted with students from 3 Head Start classrooms. On the basis of the results of the dynamic assessment, 22 children were randomly assigned to treatment (n = 12) and control (n = 10) groups for intervention. Participants received a small-group (4:1), differentiated, narrative intervention for 15–20 min, twice a week, for 9 weeks. Interventionists used weekly progress monitoring data to explicitly focus on individualized narrative and linguistic targets. Results: The treatment group showed significant improvement over the control group on proximal and distal measures of narrative retells, with large effect sizes. Group differences on a measure of children’s language in the context of personal stories were not statistically significant. Conclusions: This early-stage study provides evidence that narrative language intervention is an effective approach to improving the language skills of preschoolers with diverse language needs. Furthermore, the evidence supports the use of dynamic assessment for reducing overidentification and identifying candidates for small-group language intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effect of a large group narrative intervention on diverse preschoolers’ narrative language skills with aims to explore questions of treatment efficacy and differential response to intervention. A quasi-experimental, pretest/posttest comparison group research design was employed with 71 preschool children. Classrooms were randomly assigned to treatment and comparison conditions. Intervention consisted of explicit teaching of narrative structure via repeated story retell practice, illustrations and icons, and peer mediation. Children’s narrative language and comprehension were assessed at Pretest, Posttest, and 4 weeks after treatment. Statistically significant differences between treatment and comparison groups were found on retell and story comprehension measures. A priori classification criteria resulted in 28 percent of the participants identified as Minimal Responders on the story retell measure and 19 percent as Minimal Responders on the story comprehension measure. Children who were dual-language learners did not have a different pattern of response than monolingual English speakers. Low-intensity narrative intervention delivered to a large group of children was efficacious and can serve as a targeted language intervention for use within preschool classrooms. A culturally and linguistically appropriate, dynamic approach to assessment identified children for whom intensified intervention would be recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individualized, systematic language intervention on the personal narratives of children with autism. Method: A single-subject, multiple-baseline design across participants and behaviors was used to examine the effect of the intervention on language features of personal narratives. Three 6- to 8-year-old boys with autism participated in 12 individual intervention sessions that targeted 2-3 story grammar elements (e.g., problem, plan) and 3-4 linguistic complexity elements (e.g., causal subordination, adverbs) selected from each participant's baseline performance. Intervention involved repeated retellings of customized model narratives and the generation of personal narratives with a systematic reduction of visual and verbal scaffolding. Independent personal narratives generated at the end of each baseline, intervention, and maintenance session were analyzed for presence and sophistication of targeted features. Results: Graphical and statistical results showed immediate improvement in targeted language features as a function of intervention. There was mixed evidence of maintenance 2 and 7 weeks after intervention. Conclusion: Children with autism can benefit from an individualized, systematic intervention targeting specific narrative language features. Greater intensity of intervention may be needed to gain enduring effects for some language features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrative skills that are important for preschoolers include retelling stories, telling personal stories, and answering questions about stories. Narrative abilities form the foundation of reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an individually delivered language intervention on the narrative skills of preschoolers with developmental disabilities. Five preschoolers attending Head Start and participating in special education received 24 sessions of intervention each lasting 10 to 15 min. A multiple baseline, multiple probe experimental design was used to investigate the effects of the intervention, which incorporated visual supports (e.g., icons and pictures) and retell and personal storytelling practice, on story retells, personal stories, and story comprehension. Improvements on all three measures were related to the intervention. Parents and teachers reported that the storytelling activities were engaging, enjoyable, and produced improvements in the children’s language skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This authors of this article present a new language assessment, the Narrative Language Measures (NLM), designed for screening, progress monitoring, and intervention planning purposes. The authors examine NLM for its ability to satisfy the requirements of the assessment of language in a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework. Specifically, they describe the extent to which the NLM reflects socially important outcomes, involves standardized administration and scoring procedures, is time efficient and economical, has adequate psychometric properties, and is sensitive to language growth over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narration, or storytelling, is an important aspect of language. Narrative skills have academic and social importance. This study evaluated the effects of a narrative intervention on story retelling and personal story generation skills of preschoolers with risk factors and narrative language delays. Narrative intervention was delivered in a small group arrangement, and materials, activities, and assistance were systematically adjusted within sessions to facilitate increasingly independent practice of oral narration. Participants were 5 preschoolers enrolled in a Head Start classroom who performed below average on two narrative language tasks. Participants made substantial gains in narrative retelling, demonstrated improved preintervention to postintervention scores for personal story generations, and maintained improvements when assessed following a 2-week break. These results have several implications for practice, including narrative intervention's versatility with a range of children from diverse backgrounds and its use of economic and efficient classroom-based small group formats for intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]