Abstract
Gillam, S. L., Olszewski, A., Fargo, F., & Gillam, R. B. (2014). Classroom-based narrative and vocabulary instruction: Results of an early-stage, nonrandomized comparison study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Services in Schools, 45, 204–219.
Forty-three states and the District of Columbia are implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS; National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers, 2011). Particularly in the elementary years, there is a focus on reading literature which involves understanding and producing narrative texts of increasing complexity; and at all years attention is given to developing vocabulary and language structure. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a narrative intervention program with embedded vocabulary instruction on the performance of all the children (low risk and high risk) in a regular classroom setting. A speech-language pathologist (SLP) was the primary provider of the instruction, but the classroom teacher remained in the classroom during all sessions; facilitated participation by assisting children during the lessons; consulted with the SLP on methods, procedures, and lesson plans; and was asked to follow the teaching procedures throughout the day.
The Study
Participants
The participants were in two first-grade classrooms; 21 boys and girls in the experimental classroom and 19 children in the comparison classroom. The majority of the students (86%) were from underrepresented ethnic groups, and 75% qualified for free- or reduced-cost lunch. The Test of Narrative Language (TNL; Gillam & Pearson, 2004) was administered to all of the children in both classrooms. The mean TNL standard scores for the experimental and comparison classrooms were highly similar at pretest and about 13 points below 100. The authors set the academic risk cut-point at a standard score of 90 (equivalent to the 25th percentile) on the TNL. In the experimental classroom, there were 10 children in the low-risk subgroup (TNL performance at or above the 25th percentile) and 11 children in the high-risk subgroup (TNL performance below the 25th percentile). In the comparison classroom, there were 7 children in the low-risk subgroup and 12 children in the high-risk subgroup.
Outcome Measures
Narrative probe and rubric
At pretest and posttest, children were asked to tell stories after looking at three different single-scene pictures that did not contain an obvious initiating event. In one scene, children were holding hands in a circle; in another, children were running around in the rain; and, in the last scene, a monkey was riding on the back of a dog. These narratives were scored using a progress monitoring tool, the Monitoring Indicators of Scholarly Language (MISL; Gillam & Gillam, 2013). The MISL was designed to measure the complexity of macrostructure elements (character, setting, initiating event, internal response, plan, attempt, and consequence) and microstructure elements (coordinated and subordinated conjunctions, adverbs, metacognitive verbs, and elaborated noun phrases) in self-generated stories (a copy can be found at http://comd.web.usu.edu/files/uploads/MISL.pdf). See the Resource Review in this issue of Word of Mouth.
Vocabulary probe and rubric
A criterion-referenced vocabulary probe and rubric was used to measure students’ understanding of words related to story grammar (e.g., character, setting, complication, wrap-up), literacy knowledge (author, illustrator), feelings (e.g., happy, sad, angry, angry, bored, frustrated), verbs (e.g., attack, discover, explore), adverbs (e.g., quickly, frantically), and adjectives (e.g., shocked curious, annoyed). Children were asked to provide a definition for the vocabulary word with no prompting or contextual cues. The examiner said, “Tell me what ______ means.” A score of 0 was awarded when a child produced a definition that was wrong, replied with “I don’t know,” or did not respond. A score of 1 was awarded when a child’s response described the word using a function or attribute but was not a synonym or complete definition. A score of 1 was also given when children provided a sentence using the word in a way that clearly demonstrated appropriate conceptual knowledge related to its meaning, for example, “The illustrator was drawing.” A score of 2 was given for responses that contained accurate function or attribute information in an utterance that resembled a formal definition, for example, “The illustrator is the person who drew the drawings.”
A SLP provided narrative instruction to children in the experimental classroom for a total of 30 min, 3 times per week, over the course of 6 weeks. While the SLP was providing instruction in the experimental classroom, an undergraduate student in speech-language pathology assisted the teacher in the comparison classroom by helping the children in sounding out words or in summarizing a story.
Narrative Instruction Program
The narrative intervention program included story modeling, story retelling, story generation, and comprehension instruction. The narrative program consisted of three phases:
Phase I—Teaching Story Grammar Elements: Students heard and told stories that contained simple episodes (e.g., initiating event, attempt, consequence).
Phase II—Elaboration: Students participated in lessons designed to encourage the use of more complex narratives by including complicating actions into their stories. They also practiced incorporating dialogue, coordinated and subordinated conjunctions, adverbs, adjectives, and metacognitive verbs in their narratives.
Phase III—Independent storytelling. Children took part in multiple lessons to foster their ability to create and tell complex and elaborated stories on their own.
In Phases I and II, wordless books were used to teach story grammar elements (SGEs; for example, character, setting, initiating event, internal response, plan, attempt, consequence), literate language structures such as causal connections (because, since, so that, in order to), and the target vocabulary. Some of the vocabulary was specific to the SGEs (e.g., character, setting) and some was specific to the stories children were being exposed to (e.g., alley cat, distracted).
In Phase III, children in the experimental class were encouraged to retell stories told by the SLP as well as those created and told by other children. Games, symbolic icons, and graphic organizers were used to maintain group engagement and to support memory during the course of natural narrative discourse. Children were seated in desks arranged in groups of four to six in the classroom. When retelling or telling stories, these natural groups were used and the children in each group took turns telling their stories to the entire class. Children in other groupings were engaged in marking bingo cards containing story elements being used by children telling stories.
In Phases II and III, children worked in small groups to create stories that corresponded to single-scene pictures or to verbal prompts. For example, early in instruction, children were asked to develop a story after seeing a picture of a boat going over a waterfall. Later, as children became more proficient, they were presented with pictures that did not contain obvious initiating events, such as a picture of a smiling child sitting in the snow. Children drafted their stories onto storyboards that contained story grammar icons in sequential order in separate squares. Students used their self-made graphics to support oral storytelling. Children practiced answering questions related to each of the SGEs after listening to or telling stories. When children responded incorrectly or did not respond to questions, they were given visual support through story pictures, icons, and graphic organizers.
Results
Both low-risk and high-risk students in the experimental classroom exhibited improve MISL (narrative) scores, but only the scores of the high-risk students were clinically significant.
At posttest in the experimental classroom, the MISL scores of high-risk students caught up to the scores of low-risk students.
The change in MISL scores in the experimental classroom was due primarily to changes in macrostructure scores. The only change in the microstructure scores of the children in the experimental classroom was related to their greater use of elaborated noun phrases such as a big white thing or a blue shirt. It is possible that children did not have the cognitive resources to allocate to both macrostructure and microstructure within the short time span of the instruction.
Neither high-risk nor low-risk children in the comparison classroom exhibited a significant pre–post change in MISL (narrative) scores. The differences between the high-risk and low-risk children’s MISL scores at posttest were very similar to their differences at pretest.
Pre- to posttest effect sizes for the scores on the MISL were 3 times larger for children in the experimental as compared with the comparison classroom.
The vocabulary scores for children in the experimental classroom increased significantly from pre- to posttest. The effect size was large, suggesting a clinically significant change.
The increase in vocabulary scores was much greater for high-risk students than low-risk students in the experimental classroom.
The vocabulary scores for the children in the comparison classroom did not improve from pre- to posttest. There were no differences between the low-risk and high-risk groups.
The authors suggest three reasons for the improved narrative skills of students who were in the experimental classroom.
The narrative instruction in the experimental classroom differed from that in the traditional classroom by explicitly teaching children to specify causal links among initiating events, internal responses, plans, attempts, and consequences. The MISL scoring system was well suited for capturing the kinds of incremental changes that occurred in children’s narratives as a result of the instruction provided. The inclusion of causal links among story elements was measured by the MISL. When a child provided an initiating event that was clearly linked to a plan, attempt, or consequence, the use of the element was awarded a score of 2. Similarly, when internal responses, plans, attempts, or consequences were distinctly related to the stated initiating event, each was awarded a score of 2. It was possible for a child to score 2 each for initiating event, attempt, and consequence and 1 for internal response if the word used to reflect how the character was feeling could not be directly linked to the initiating event.
Narrative instruction in the experimental classroom taught children to include information about how their characters were feeling, what they were planning, and why. This emphasis required children to make inferences about internal states, motivations, feelings, and plans. Story knowledge is facilitated when instruction includes a focus on internal states and motivations of characters (Dunning, 1992). Young elementary-school-age children are typically not proficient in generating inferences or recalling information from stories about character motivation (Shannon, Kameenui, & Baumann, 1988). Instruction targeting children’s skill in generating inferences about why characters decide to take particular actions is associated with greater gains in comprehension than instruction that focused on discussion of actions without talking about internal states. Instruction in the comparison classroom may have focused more on recalling key details and explicit, factual information contained in stories than on motivational states of characters.
The narrative instruction stressed the importance of story complexity. Consequently, children were asked to include complicating actions into their stories. At posttesting, more children in the experimental classroom included complicating actions than did children in the comparison classroom.