The goal of this research was to assess children's beliefs about the reality status of storybook characters and events. In Experiment 1, 156 preschool age children heard realistic, fantastical, or religious stories, and their understanding of the reality status of the characters and events in the stories was assessed. Results revealed that…

Dialogical storybook reading is a technique that supports the language skills competencies of children. With this study the dialogical storybook reading technique is introduced to Turkish parents. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the Turkish parents' experiences with dialogical storybook reading technique. The data were…

Social Stories[TM] are a popular intervention for preschool children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but little research on Social Stories has been conducted with this population. This study investigated the effects of Social Stories on prosocial behavior of three preschool children with ASD in an inclusive setting. An ABAB design was used…

This study examined whether maternal evaluations of children's emergent literacy (EL) levels, maternal mediation during a book-reading activity with children, and the children's EL levels differ as a function of socioeconomic status (SES; low vs. high), and whether the relationships between these variables differ as a function of SES levels. Study…

Developmental changes in the amount of social consensus in grid ratings are investigated in six samples of school children spanning the age range 6-17. (Editor)

Investigated the effects on 4th graders of writing tasks that were based on a reading selection. Results indicated that good readers enjoyed the story more than poor readers and that the subjects as a whole enjoyed reading the story significantly more than they enjoyed writing about it. (JMB)

Two implications for instruction in language arts are suggested. First, more reading of children's literature in the reading/language arts curriculum will foster learning the way language is written. Second, teaching story discourse rules directly is inappropriate, since children will tacitly construct the rules much as they have developed other…

People encounter stories everyday and everywhere. They are the oldest and most natural form of sense making (Jonassen, Strobel, & Gottdenker, 2004). It is a powerful tool that enables one to gain knowledge, understand phenomenon, remembers the unusual and to interact with the people around them. This paper proposes that stories can create an…

An 8-year-old American Indian boy learns to overcome his fear of the forest at night. (FF)

A Jemez Pueblo boy goes on his first successful elk hunt with his grandfather. (FF)

Examined the effects of a high-value v low-value reward on intrinsic interest in reading a high-interest v low-interest storybook for 54 second- and third-grade children. Both reward value and storybook interest were inferred on the basis of individual choices made by each child. (JMB)

Describes a high school unit which combines the writing of children's stories with the reading of the finished stories to primary school students. (DD)

Notes that children either actively participated by asking questions or passively participated by listening to a recast containing a familiar synonym for each target word. Finds that children with higher vocabulary knowledge acquired significantly more words than did passive participants, and children with high versus low working memory did not…

Describes an outreach program for imprisoned women in Iowa that allows mothers to read their children bedtime stories. Project Storybook mothers choose new books, record themselves reading the books on tape, then mail both to their children at home. Women must belong to a mother's support group to participate. Community response to this project…