The Effects of Retelling Upon Reading Comprehension and Recall of Text Information

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of retelling (free recall) upon the comprehension and recall of text information for 93 fourth-grade students. Subjects were assigned randomly to one of two generative learning strategy treatment conditions: retelling or illustrating. Subjects participated in four training sessions and one test session. For each of the four training sessions subjects silently read a passage and then, according to treatment condition, either retold the important parts of the passage or illustrated the important parts of the passage. For the test passage all subjects silently read the passage, and then rendered a free recall. Two days later all subjects rendered a delayed free recall and answered 10 literal and 10 inferential questions about the test passage. Statistically significant differences were found on all measures of reading comprehension and recall (immediate free recall, two-day delayed free recall, and responses to literal and inferential questions) in favor of the subjects who received practice in retelling. The results suggest that retelling is a highly potent generative learning strategy and that retelling has direct, beneficial consequences for children's processing of subsequent text.     

The importance of parental book‐reading; tensions between theory and practice

This article is about book‐reading by nine lower class Curaçaoan mothers and their children. All children visited a kindergarten in Curaçao. Curaçao is an island in the Caribbean.

The kindergarten teachers had started a reading project to stimulate parents to read books to their children. Teachers did not know how parents actually read to their children. We conducted the study to describe parent and child activities during joint story‐book reading. We use this project as a case to clarify some of the tensions between notions based on research findings from studies which were mainly conducted with middle class families and projects for educational change which tend to focus on lower class families. Theory tells us that reading with young children should be interactive. Conversations, in which the child actively engages, linking the story or pictures to the child's own knowledge and experiences, are more important to the child's development than reading the story as such. The Curaçaoan reading project is just one example of many project swhich aim at stimulating parental book‐reading without training the parents how book‐reading best can be done.

In the study we found that the parent‐child dyads talkeda lot during book reading. The conversations of some dyads, however, contained many instances of unsuccessful dialogue, and few moments of construction of meaning beyond the actual text. In addition, mothers strongly structured the dialogue that consisted for a large part of retelling the story. It is doubtful whether this type of book reading is as developmen‐tally enriching for the children as is expected and suggested by the teachers.     

Reading a tale of deception,learning a theory of mind?

This study explores the role folk tales of deception might play in assisting the child's development of a theory of mind. Four three- and four-year-olds read and reread “The Brave Little Tailor” with their parents. The results suggest that rereading a folk tale of deception sets a framework for social interactions supporting the development of the child's understanding of mental representation. The deceptions of the story elicit discussions—of thoughts and feelings and their relation to intentions and actions—that change over the course of successive readings as the child shows increasing comprehension of the deceptions of the story and decreasing need of parental support. Parent-child pairs differ in how they structure their interactions and gender of parent and of child appears to affect how frequently and explicitly connections are drawn between actions, beliefs, and reality. Reading a familiar story with a new person allows the child to assume a more active “expert” role.     

Teacher dialogue style and children’s story comprehension

The three components of the dialogue style are: a) a great number of questions asked by the teacher during the storytelling; b) three exclusive types of questions asked; and c) a variety of questions. The present study is intended to analyse the relationships between these components and children’s story comprehension. The subjects were 48 children, aged 4;4 to 6;2, randomly divided into four groups of 12 children each: the number, exclusive types, and variety groups, and a control group (the reading group). Twenty-four teachers were also divided randomly into four groups of six teachers each, and assigned to the four children’s groups. Each teacher told the story to two children at a time; the children were chosen and paired randomly. Each child, singly, retold the story and then answered a questionaire on the structure of the story. The responses of each child were compared with the story text and considered correct if approriate to the contents of the story. The mean percentages of correct responses in the three experimental groups were higher than those of the control group. This difference is significant in the free retelling situation.     

Minimum and maximum entitlements: literature at Key Stage 2

How far does the difference between a child's minimum reading entitlement (“I can read different types of text for different purposes – and I've got level 4 to prove it”) and maximum entitlement (“I recognise the power of literature and want to read it for the rest of my life”) encapsulate a tension present in many primary classrooms? In England, literature (poetry, narrative, plays) is taught as part of the National Literacy Strategy and a child's knowledge of how it works may be assessed if literary texts are included in the end of Key Stage 2 reading test. The requirements of the Strategy and especially the reading test may well impact on the maximum entitlement of a child to become a reader for life. This article explores some of the dangers which result from viewing the minimum entitlement as the maximum being aimed at in the classroom.     

It's story time!: exploring the potential of multimodality in oral storytelling to support children's vocabulary learning

Although many studies have been done on the benefits of parent/teacher‐child interactions during shared storybook reading or read‐aloud sessions, very few have examined the potential of professional storytellers' oral discourse to support children's vocabulary learning. In those storytelling sessions conducted by professional storytellers, the process of telling a story is typically not accompanied by a book, but only by the teller's well‐coordinated gestures, facial expressions and voice modulations. In this study, I perform a multimodal analysis of storytellers' oral discourse recorded during two storytelling sessions for four‐to‐five‐year‐old children. The study aims to (1) find out the specific types of vocal and visual features accompanying the spoken words which were unlikely to be known by the children but used by the storytellers for representations of events and characters, and (2) explore the potential of these multimodal features in oral storytelling to support children's inferring of word meanings. The study offers insights into multimodality in oral storytelling and implications for exploring the potential of multimodal features in this form of literacy practice to support children's vocabulary learning.     

Preschool children's exposure to story grammar elements during parent–child book reading

Twenty‐three preschool‐age children, 3;6 (years; months) to 4;1, were videotaped separately with their mothers and fathers while each mother and father read a different unfamiliar storybook to them. The text from the unfamiliar storybooks was parsed and coded into story grammar elements and all parental extratextual utterances were transcribed and coded for (1) their relationship to the story grammar elements found within the storybook, and (2) the natural strategies parents used to direct their children's attention to these elements. Children's overall exposure to story grammar elements during book reading was also explored for its relationship to their language abilities. Results indicated that parents focused significantly more on the resolution, attempt, and consequence compared to the initiating event and plan, and most frequently used the text and pictures as strategies for recruiting their children's attention to the story grammar elements within the book. In addition, the frequency of parental utterances related to story grammar elements was negatively correlated with children's language abilities. This study did not examine the complexity or depth of parental utterances related to story grammar elements. These findings provide initial evidence that children may derive their understanding of story grammar at least in part through their parents' extratextual discussions during parent–child book reading.     

Putting the child first how one student teacher negotiated the moral landscape of teaching

Abstract

One student teacher's moral development process is uncovered, using a case study approach to capture the participant's internal processes and the constructed social context. The participant was in the first eight‐week placement of her semester‐long student teaching assignment, a kindergarten classroom in a rural public elementary school with a diverse student body. The participant believed that her professional moral responsibility was to “put the child first.” She believed this included protecting the child's dignity and autonomy, creating a close classroom community, establishing trust between teacher and child, fostering productive communication among all adults in the child's life, and safeguarding the child's health and safety. The participant maintained these priorities in her daily teaching practice and used them in her decision‐making process. However, the decisions that she was required to make during her early weeks of student teaching led to a modified understanding of her values. Democratic discourse and professional autonomy were associated with the process of moral development in this case. Theoretical and practical implications are described.     

The Influence of Gender Differences on Story Retellings

The purpose of this study was to determine the differences between third and sixth grade female and male students when retelling orally a story read silently. The students' retelling of the story was analyzed by comparing how closely, both structurally and linguistically, they paralleled the T-units or communication units of the author. In general, female students performed significantly differently than did male students. The researchers examine these differences in light of recent research in the area of gender differences.     

Telling and Retelling Our Stories on the Professional Knowledge Landscape

Drawing on a 3-year study focusing on the shaping influences of the professional knowledge landscape on the personal practical knowledge of experienced teachers, we first explore how stories are shaped as they are told and responded to in different places and, second, explore whether or not this sharing leads to imagining new possibilities for retelling and reliving stories. By sharing and exploring a story of a disagreement between a parent and a teacher, we focus on what we do when we tell stories in schools and what we do when we tell stories off the school landscape. In making meaning from this story, we show that both in the teacher's living of the story with the parent and in her numerous recountings of the story to others on the school landscape, she did not have opportunities to figure out new ways to relive the story. In our research group, she shared her story again. In this telling, we asked her to focus on who she, the mother, and the principal are in the story, and we inquire into what plotlines each were living. We ask questions about how they were positioned as characters in relation to one another. Re-searching the story in this way enabled us to understand the embodied nature of the teacher's knowing and how this knowledge shaped the events of the story as they were lived out, particularly how the teacher's living of a relational story countered the story of teacher and principal as positioned above parent. By drawing on Nelson's work on 'found' and 'chosen' communities, we imagine ways in which schools could become chosen communities where the story of school might be one of fostering the living out of multiple stories. We imagine the stories emerging from such communities might significantly shape the landscape of schools by opening up new possibilities for living in relation with others.     

Julia in Ricoeur's World

Student readers/writers need the opportunity to bring to literary texts the imaginative knowledge crucial for retelling the author's story (concretizing the author's schema) in order to complete the act of reading. Paul Ricoeur's analysis of reading as a three-fold mimesis as articulated in his multi-volume series Time and Narrative suggests the necessary role of the reader as implementer of the text. This essay looks in detail at one 'free response' essay written by Julia, a bicultural student fluent in Japanese and English as she makes sense for herself of Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon . Arguing for the necessarily heightened sensitivity and engagement of bicultural readers in questioning texts to make sense of both texts and life, this essay links Julia's writing about the novel with Ricoeur's theories and suggests a few principles for the teaching of literature in order to engage them in mimesis 3 as Ricoeur envisions the reader's role in the act of reading.     

The effects of group size on kindergarten children's listening comprehension performance

The present study assessed the effect of small, medium, and large group size on kindergarten children's listening comprehension. Approximately 120 children were divided by sex and randomly assigned to one of four groups which varied from one another only in size. To determine the children's entry listening comprehension skill level, subtests of four reading tests were administered to all children. Those children participating in one adult to one child instruction, one adult to seven or eight children instruction, and one adult to fifteen children instruction interacted daily for ten sessions with an instructor who posed specific comprehension questions, read a carefully selected piece of children's literature, then restated the comprehension questions to assess the children's understanding of the story. All responses were recorded on a pictorial answer sheet. Those children in the control group received no instruction. The children's exit level listening comprehension skills were reassessed by administering the same preinstruction subtests to all children immediately following the ten sessions. Group size was found to affect significantly the children's performance, with one to one instruction resulting in the greatest gains.     

Sonya Hartnett's Thursday's Child: Readings

Sonya Hartnett's Thursday's Child was published in Australia by Penguin Books in 2000. Editions are available in the UK (Walker Books, 2002), the USA (Candlewick, 2002), as well as in Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Denmark. In 2002, the book was awarded the Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize in the UK. Like Harper, the narrator of the novel, Sonya Hartnett began to write early—her first book, Trouble All the Way, was written when she was 13 and published 2 years later. It seems that adults read Thursday's Child and talk about it without any reference to young readers; we see it as one of those books you read and immediately look for someone to discuss it with. And then go back to the book to reread. It's one of those novels that, like many poems, offers multiple readings and the reader may be content to accept several of them. The UK editors of this journal wanted to bring this intriguing novel to the notice of readers who may not yet have discovered it, and, we felt sure, those who already knew the book would welcome two close readings to set alongside their own. We invited Judith Armstrong to begin the discussion. Then David Rudd, with the benefit of Judith's insights, adds his exploration of the novel. Between the two essays, we have included some comments, extracted from a taped conversation, of two 14-year-old readers. This article comprises two sustained responses to Sonya Hartnett's award-winning novel, Thursday's Child. Both essays explore multiple readings of a complex and intriguing text. Set in the Great Depression in Australia, the novel is seen as at once realistic, mythic, and even fantastic. Judith Armstrong considers Tin, the subject of the title, as a feral child and examines his influence on the other members of his family. As he tunnels through the earth, so does the narrator Harper (Tin's older sister) “dig” with her pen. Their excavations leave both children forever marked by the bleak and sometimes violent events recorded in the book. David Rudd continues the discussion, finding Freud's exploration of “the uncanny” and J. M. Barrie's character, Peter Pan, illuminating in his reading of the novel. He also asks how far Harper can be trusted as narrator: can we even be certain that her brother survived a mudslide that occurred early in the story?     

Gender differences in factors associated with how parents communicate with school in Korea

The authors explored different factors that were associated with mothers' and fathers' choice between two forms of parent–school communication: school briefing sessions and parent–teacher conferences. A total of 585 parents—295 mothers and 290 fathers from different households—who had at least one child enrolled in middle school in Korea were surveyed. Analytic results indicated that there were gender differences in how mothers and fathers were motivated to communicate with school. More educated and affluent mothers who positively assessed their child's academic achievement but were less confident in the child's ability and dissatisfied with the school-provided information were more likely to communicate with the school, whereas fathers were influenced by the employment status of their wives and communication with the child. Perception of positive child–teacher relationship predicted both mothers' and fathers' engagement in communication. Based on the findings, the authors discuss ways to promote parental involvement in communication with school.     

5-6岁幼儿故事复述能力研究——以西安市4所幼儿园为例

幼儿故事在幼儿发展和幼儿园教学中起着非常重要的作用,不同的幼儿在不同的故事呈现方式中表现出不同的复述特点。本文采用多彩光谱语言评估标准,对从西安市市区4所不同类型幼儿园中获得的126份语言样本进行了分析。研究结果显示,图书组和录音组幼儿的故事复述能力差异不显著,视频组幼儿在故事复述能力测试中总体得分较低。尽管从总体上看,许多幼儿的复述能力处于同一水平,但构成复述能力的要素却存在较大的个体差异。不同幼儿在同一语言活动中复述故事的字数和语言特点各不相同。     

Observations and ratings of preschool children's social behavior: Issues of representativeness and validity

Data were gathered from videotaped recordings of two preschool children engaged in unstructured free play over 12 days each. Observers coded behavior from the videotapes and completed a behavior rating scale for each child after every two observation sessions. Teachers also completed two behavior rating scales per child. Results indicated that at least three 30‐min observation sessions were required to reliably represent a child's overall behavior. Moderate correlations were obtained when observations were compared with teachers' and observers' own ratings, indicating the behavior rating scale did an adequate job of reflecting actual observed behavior. The implications of these results for researchers and practitioners are discussed. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 13–26, 2005.     

Children with Behavioural and Emotional Difficulties: Complex Children,Complex Training for Teachers

This paper consists of two parents’ accounts of their experiences of having children with AD/HD. The article is divided into three distinct sections. In the first section the mother of ‘Simon’ describes her experience of bringing up a child who, from early infancy, presented challenging behaviour. She describes the effect of this on her family and her self esteem as a parent. She goes on to give an account of the process by which ‘Simon’ came to be diagnosed as having AD/HD and the effects of the ensuing treatment programme. In the second section the same writer describes the impact of her experience on her relationships with the extended family. The third section of the paper is provided by a second writer, who is also the mother of a child with AD/HD. This section focuses on the difficulties she experienced in dealing with her child's educational needs and the conflicts which arose between her and staff in her child's school.     

Effects of live and recorded story telling on retelling performance of preschool children from low socioeconomic backgrounds

Two modes of story telling, live reading and recorded reading, were compared to test the hypothesis that live reading results in better retention. Thirty-four preschool children from low socioeconomic backgrounds were randomly assigned to the two conditions. Each child heard a story presented by the teacher or a recording and then retold the story in his or her own words. Children in the live group used significantly more words and more correct themes in retelling (p <.01) than did those in the recording group. Implications for research and teaching are discussed.     

“The three hags and Pocohontas”: how collaboration develops Early Years writing skills

This article relates a child's development in story writing and the progress that she made in achieving text cohesion, spelling development and ideation through the collaborative process. The case study investigates the integration of major aspects of writing development such as collaboration, the importance of peer interactions through social learning and the fusion of illustrations and writing to assist children's communication and understanding. The authors examine the rationale for the inclusion of collaborative peer‐assisted writing and peer interaction as a social writing process, supporting the young writer's affective domain. The case study investigates the integration of major aspects of writing development such as collaboration, the importance of peer interactions through social learning and the fusion of illustrations and writing to assist children's communication and understanding. The authors examine the rationale for the inclusion of collaborative peer‐assisted writing and peer interaction as a social writing process, supporting the young writer's affective domain development. The strengths and complexities of peer interaction, the role of illustrations and their positive impact on composition are discussed.     

Purposeful pauses: teacher talk during early childhood mathematics activities

This paper describes how early childhood teachers' incorporation of pauses raises the quality of talk-in-interaction during play-based mathematics activities. Responses of both children and teachers are shown to be more contingent and expansive when conversations include protracted pauses than during interactions in which pauses are largely absent. Pauses provided children with opportunities to initiate topics and facilitated more equitable access to discourse moves for children. By pausing before responding to a child's conversational gambit, teachers gained opportunities to assess children's demonstrated numeracy-related skills and understanding, and could thus provide authentic, individualised scaffolding. Pauses were not necessarily silent: a pause in an interaction with one child could be used strategically to model the learning interaction with a second child before returning to the first child in order to continue the discourse sequence.