(REC) Teaching Writing through Oral Storytelling

Students and clients who can tell cohesive and coherent personal stories are more likely to have higher language and literacy outcomes and report past experiences to appropriate authorities (e.g., report abuse, feelings about a previous situation). Even before students are able to write legibly, they can learn critical storytelling skills that generalize from oral to written language.

This presentation will present an overview of research on the use of an oral storytelling intervention to improve the writing skills of early learners. Participants will receive a copy of the article and learn how to use a provided tool to measure the quality of written and oral narratives produced by clients or students.

• Participants will identify the key structural elements of written and oral narrative language (i.e., story grammar)
• Participants will generate 1 written personal narrative based on knowledge and skills learned within the presentation
• Given a writing sample, Participants will quantify the quality of the narrative using a provided tool (Narrative Language Measure Flow Chart)
• Participants will explain how oral narrative language is related to written narrative language
• Participants will be able to name at least one behavior analytic intervention targeting oral narrative or written narrative language skills instruction