The Storytelling Strategies of Early Childhood Teachers

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

One of the most effective tools in supporting children’s language and literacy development is through storytelling. A wealth of research has shown that book-based storytelling and story reading in particular, are important contexts for boosting children’s development of language and literacy, such that various components of teacher talk during this activity (e.g., text talk, extratextual talk, discourse strategies) are related to a whole host of child outcomes (e.g., Barnes et al., 2017). Given this critical contribution, shared book reading is recommended as an effective practice in early childhood education. Yet, one activity related to language and literacy learning that is often overlooked in classroom practice is oral storytelling, or storytelling without the use of a text, despite research suggesting that oral storytelling also serves as an important context for language and literacy learning. Indeed, oral storytelling has been shown to be effective in targeting different skills within language and literacy (e.g., story comprehension; Isbell et al., 2004; Lenhart et al., 2020) as compared to book reading. To date, few studies have examined teachers’ use of storytelling strategies during both shared book reading and oral storytelling. Exploring how storytelling strategies differ across contexts is important for considering the implementation of other language and literacy learning opportunities in the classroom. Thus, the current study seeks to address this gap by investigating early childhood teachers’ storytelling strategies used during shared book reading and oral storytelling.

Early childhood teachers (N = 37) from 18 preschool classrooms and 19 kindergarten classrooms in New York City participated in this study. At the start of the study, participating teachers completed demographic questionnaires. Teachers were then visited at school at two time points, and were audio and video recorded as they engaged their class in a storytelling interaction (i.e., a wordless book sharing at Time 1 and an oral story at Time 2). Teachers’ storytelling interactions were later transcribed and verified at the utterance-level using CHAT conventions (MacWhinney, 2000). Transcripts were then analyzed for various indices of narrative complexity such as vocabulary diversity, mean length utterance, types, and tokens, using VOCD programs available through the CHILDES system. Additionally, transcripts were coded for teachers’ use of storytelling strategies (e.g., repetition & rephrasing, direct recall, vocabulary) using a coding scheme adapted from Gómez et al. (2017).

Final coding and analyses are ongoing; however, preliminary findings suggest variability in teachers’ provision and request of vocabulary words, with teachers more likely to introduce and define key vocabulary words during the pre-reading or pre-telling (i.e., prior to the narration of the story) when sharing oral stories as opposed to wordless picture books. Oral story interactions also seem to provide greater opportunities for teachers to make connections to children’s own lived experiences as a way of supporting story comprehension. Findings of the study will be discussed in relation to policy and practice implications for utilizing diverse language and literacy practices in early childhood classrooms to support children’s school readiness skills.

Authors

• Nathalia Sanchez, New York University
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Lim, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cassie Wuest, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Adina Schick, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gigliana Melzi, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author