Strengths-Based Approaches for Examining and Supporting Narrative Development in Young Children

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

How might adopting a strengths-based approach toward narrative development inform the ways in which we examine and support these skills in young children? The four papers in this symposium session address this broader question by considering novel approaches toward conceptualizing and scaffolding narrative development in preschoolers and kindergarteners. The first paper considers how emergent Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers draw on multimodal resources beyond language to support the construction and development of narratives across an academic year. The second paper views narrative skills as an ecocultural asset in children from Latinx families, and examines how parental language and literacy practices in the home environment, including book reading, reminiscing, and mealtime conversations, are associated with kindergarteners' storytelling skills. The last two papers consider the potential of small group storytelling circles in preschool classrooms for surfacing a variety of culturally-shaped narrative discourse patterns as well as supporting the creation of a cultural community of story sharing. Specifically, the third study explores how culturally-shaped meaning-making patterns are evident in the narratives of a culturally, linguistically, and ethnically diverse sample of preschoolers engaging in small group storytelling circles. The fourth study investigates how peer interactions and peer engagement in the context of small group story-sharing circles, implemented in a summer kindergarten readiness camp, may help scaffold narrative development via the creation of a supportive story sharing cultural community.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Kiren S Khan, Rhodes College

Individual Presentations

• Emergent Bilingual Preschooler’s Narrative Discourse and Transmodal Practices in Spanish and English Story Retells - Presenting Author: Sabrina Sembiante, Florida Atlantic University; Alain Bengochea, University of Nevada Las Vegas

• Parents’ Book-Reading Practices Relate to Latino Kindergarteners’ Narrative Skills - Presenting Author: Diana Leyva, University of Pittsburgh; Gloria Yeomans-Maldonado, Children’s Learning Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; Christina J Weiland, University of Michigan; Anna Shapiro, University of Virginia

• Supporting Language Diversities through Story Circles - Presenting Author: Erin Elizabeth Flynn, Portland State University

• Examining the Impact of Peer Groups on Children’s Narrative Development: Indexing the Creation of a Story-Sharing Community - Presenting Author: Kiren S Khan, Rhodes College; Abby Hultquist, Rhodes College; Ava Dempsey, Rhodes College