Teaching Narrative Comprehension Strategies to First Graders

Abstract

This study provided 5 weeks of direct strategy instruction about narrative elements and relations in 4 first-grade classrooms (n = 83), all with materials that made minimal decoding demands on children's reading. Two comparison classrooms (n = 40) received comparable instruction on language development and poetry. A battery of assessments given at pretest and posttest showed that the intervention benefited children's comprehension of narratives in the picture-viewing modality as well as narrative meaning-making in listening comprehension and oral production modalities. Understanding and recall of main narrative elements improved, as did inference-making skills and understanding the psychological aspects of stories. Implications for enhancing beginning readers’ emerging narrative knowledge in primary grade classrooms are discussed.