Effectiveness of Story Enactments Versus Art Projects in Facilitating Preschool Children's Story Comprehension

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to compare preschool children's comprehension of a story after either enacting the story or participating in an art project, and (b) to qualitatively describe the children's interactions during the more interactive story enactment instruction. Twenty children from two Head Start classrooms were told the stories as a class, and then participated in either an art project (AP) or story enactment (SE) in small groups. The children in each classroom each heard three stories followed by the AP condition, and three followed by the SE condition. The children's comprehension of the story was tested after the story was initially read, and again after the AP or SE by having the children participate in a joint retelling of the story in which the child was asked to fill in several pieces of information as the examiner told the story. Children's comprehension of the story was significantly better after receiving story enactment instruction than after art project instruction, although significant variability was present. Children's interactions during the story enactment were evaluated using a rubric. Children's participation varied from story to story. Smaller group sizes and repeated enactments were beneficial to most children's participation in the story.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Grantor dc:publisher

Brigham Young University - Provo

Author dc:creator

• Johnson, Jennifer Ann

• story enactment
• story comprehension
• art project
• story retelling
• preschool
• Communication Sciences and Disorders

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/689

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-1688