Post-telling activities following oral storytelling can help improve children’s narrative comprehension and analytical skills by reinforcing concepts learned throughout the story. These activities can take place immediately after the telling of the story or can be integrated into classroom activities later in the day, helping students make connections between the story and other subject matter, as well as their own experiences.
Directly After Storytelling
Directly after storytelling, activities that involve summarizing the story, facilitating group discussion, and eliciting student participation can strengthen children’s narrative comprehension.
Summarizing the story is important because it aids in students’ recall and sequencing of story events. It also allows teachers to gain an understanding of what information was retained by students, clarify difficult ideas, and ask comprehension questions. Retelling activities support students’ comprehension skills by helping them to understand story structure, make inferences, and synthesize important information. Post-telling strategies to practice summarizing and retelling the story in class include:
Asking children to recall important story elements (e.g., character, plot, setting) in their own words.
Having students use pictures or props from the telling portion to retell important events in their own words.
Facilitating group discussion among students is another excellent way to strengthen story comprehension directly after storytelling. Children may be invited to share their opinions, thoughts, and feelings about the story with questions such as “What did you like about the story?” or “How would you feel if you were this character in this story?” One strategy that can be followed to elicit participation from students and foster comprehension is the CROWD technique (see Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998). While every component of CROWD need not be used, it is a useful tool that may help to accommodate children's’ differing comprehension levels and invite more students into the discussion. In the CROWD technique:
C stands for completion, prompting children to complete a sentence.
R stands for recall, asking questions that require remembering main events.
O stands for open-ended prompts.
W stands for Wh- questions, which may be used to reveal key story elements.
D stands for distancing prompts, encouraging students to draw connections between the story and their personal experiences.
Later in the day/week:
Post-telling strategies incorporated throughout the day or week can be especially effective in fostering children’s comprehension. Combining post-telling with other classroom activities helps students to draw connections and apply story concepts or vocabulary to new experiences. One form of post-telling activity involves incorporating story concepts into emergent writing or visual arts activities (e.g., drawing, labeling, writing). Teachers may have students diagram story maps to portray important story elements. Graphic organizers (e.g., storyboards, Venn diagrams) may be used to help students visualize important relationships. Teachers may also help students construct alternate endings to the story. These activities foster narrative comprehension, support creativity, and highlight student interests.
Similarly, drawing on storytelling concepts for dramatic arts activities in the classroom may allow children to make connections, engage with different perspectives, and experiment with character personalities in a creative way. Classroom dramatic play and story dramatization can help children solidify their understanding of narrative structure and develop emotional literacy. These activities can be facilitated by having students act out different scenes of the story with the help of props. Finally, story concepts can be applied to early science and math lessons to reinforce understanding through new applications. Teachers may bring in an item for children to experiment with using their five senses or learn about a new location, food, or phenomenon. Exposure to new props, concepts, or ideas from the narrative in new settings promotes greater comprehension and the extension of this learned knowledge to new contexts.
These post-telling techniques can be applied to fit teachers’ students and classroom environment. While teachers shouldn’t feel pressured to apply every strategy listed, they should feel comfortable experimenting with different approaches to match their students' comprehension level and personal interests. Using these post-telling techniques directly after storytelling and throughout the day is a wonderful way to not only strengthen comprehension, but to get to know and engage with students more effectively!
Freda Hasselbring is a senior in the Applied Psychology program at New York University
References
Lonigan, C. J., & Whitehurst, G. J. (1998). Relative efficacy of parent and teacher involvement in a shared-reading intervention for preschool children from low-income backgrounds. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 13(2), 263-290.
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