The Effects of a Story-Reading Program on the Vocabulary and Story Comprehension Skills of Disadvantaged Prekindergarten and Kindergarten Students

This paper describes the development and effects of a story-reading program (STaR) on the language and comprehension of disadvantaged prekindergarten and kindergarten students. The story-reading program was developed as a part of a school restructuring effort, Success for All. STaR contains materials (sequence cards, flannel board materials), and methods (retelling, dramatization) to facilitate the effective use of stones in classrooms. Individual students from a matched control school were matched with experimental students in the pro- gram assessment. The Merrill Language Screening Test and the TOLD were individually administered to 206 prekindergarten (43 matched pairs) and kindergarten students (60 matched pairs) to measure program effects on language. Positive effects for program ranged from .24 to 3.75.