Page 25 - Literacy Based Speech Language Therapy Activities Digital Version

Improving Story Narratives of Diverse Children

ones need to be explicitly taught. Oftentimes, we see school expectations requiring skills, such as
cooperation and patience, that require direct teaching.

Poverty can also negatively impact language development, reading, and school performance.
Children from limited-language environments hear the most commonly occurring words (Weizman
and Snow, 2001). Their receptive vocabularies can be less than 5,000 words while other children

understand 20,000 words (Montgomery and Evans, 2009). Children in poverty average 25 hours of
reading at home as opposed to 1,000 hours of reading in language-rich homes (Whitehurst,
Adamson, and Romski, 1997). This puts children from low SES backgrounds at an academic

disadvantage.

Shiro (1998) illustrated this point in a study of Venezuelan school children in which she sought to
identify whether or not appropriate use of evaluative talk differed across age, gender, and class. The
use of listener feedback and critique (evaluative talk) is the basis for learning competent story telling.

Evaluative feedback was studied in the creation of fictional and personal narratives. Shiro found that
evaluative language varied considerably with age and social class. The stories expanded in correlation

with an increase in age. Not only did stories improve with social status, but it was also noted that
children of a lower social class had difficulty even producing fictional narratives (Shiro, 1998).

Fortunately, the brain is an elastic organ that continually responds to input. Strategies, such as

creating a positive, high-achieving environment, impacts social and behavioral outcomes. Making
connections by basing lessons on topics students actually know about can make a huge difference
during therapy. We will also talk about brain-based strategies in the intervention portion of this
book. We have an important role on our campuses and can use our communication knowledge to

give a massive boost to children from all walks of life.

Narrative Elements that are Specific to Spanish and

English

In his cross comparison of the traditional American “sharing time” with the Spanish equivalent “La

Ronda,” Poveda (2002) identified narrative elements that were both shared and culturally specific.
Existence, organization, and content of each session were similar. That is to say that both cultures
valued having the sharing time as part of their curriculum, structured the experience similarly, and

covered similar topics. However, the goals of the sessions were different. Oral narratives of Spanish
children had moral themes. These children used the event to demonstrate a sense of themselves in
relation to their community. English narratives in turn were more individualistic and child-centered.

Different narrative abilities were born out of similar situations. The difference could be derived from

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