Teaching narrative:
Many teachers already use story frames to develop narratives.
The telling or retelling of an event or experience is a skill required throughout the curriculum. Initially, children report a collection of unrelated events but gradually the organisation of information becomes clearer, with characters and settings established, events following a chronological order and with the plot showing clear indications of the motivation and goals of the characters.
Children develop the sub-skills required for this over a period of time. These sub-skills include knowledge and use of grammar, vocabulary, world experience, the understanding of cause and effect and listener knowledge as well as an awareness of story structure. It is these skills which come into play when a 'good' story is told or written.
Children with speech and language difficulties might produce narratives which are:
- poorly organised
- shorter and with simpler story lines
- limited in terms of including cause and effect
- limited in terms of settling any characters' motivation and goals.
It should be noted that there may be a difference between children's abilities to use oral and written narrative because of the level of their literacy skills.
To develop narrative skills there should be discussion of the elements of simple stories in terms of:
- who is in the story
- where it is located
- when it is set
- what is the problem
- how the problem is resolved
Short, simple stories, in which some of the information is gained from the pictures, can be used as a basis for the above.
There are specific narrative development materials published that are useful resources for suitable stories.