Storytelling Comes Alive: An Arts Integration Model for Learning Academic Language and Narrative in Preschool

• In Event: Teacher Beliefs and Practices to Foster Engaged Literacy Learning

Abstract

A community arts organization, in partnership with a Head Start site and a local university received funding to support a participatory evaluation of their early arts-integration storytelling program. The stakeholders used a rapid cycle design-and-test model for tool design, using local data and content expertise, and consolidated their understanding to guide the content and piloting of formative measures of how artists scaffolded oral language in preschool classroom storytelling sessions. Results of the pilot provided evidence that the tools measure teaching processes reliably, and the use of the tools shifted standard classroom work to make room for productive teacher reflection and potential for change in classroom teacher instructional practices in oral language scaffolding.

Authors

• Catherine Anne Miller, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

• Marjorie Rowe, East Carolina University