CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 223Early Childhood Education and DevelopmentReading and Literacy DevelopmentLanguage Development and Disorders

Using a narrative- and play-based activity to promote low-income preschoolers’ oral language, emergent literacy, and social competence

Open access
Nicolopoulou, Ageliki, Cortina, Kai Schnabel, Ilgaz, Hande, Cates, Carolyn Brockmeyer, de Sá, Aline B.·2015·Early Childhood Research Quarterly
DOI 10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.01.006PMC PMC4391821
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This study examined whether a storytelling and story-acting practice (STSA), integrated as a regular component of the preschool curriculum, can help promote three key dimensions of young children's school readiness: narrative and other oral-language skills, emergent literacy, and social competence. A total of 149 low-income preschoolers (almost all 3- and 4-year-olds) participated, attending six experimental and seven control classrooms. The STSA was introduced in the experimental classrooms for the entire school year, and all children in both conditions were pre- and post-tested on 11 measures of narrative, vocabulary, emergent literacy, pretend abilities, peer play cooperation, and self-regulation. Participation in the STSA was associated with improvements in narrative comprehension, print and word awareness, pretend abilities, self-regulation, and reduced play disruption. For almost all these measures, positive results were further strengthened by the frequency of participation in storytelling by individual children, indicated by number of stories told (NOST). The STSA is a structured preschool practice that exemplifies child-centered, play-based, and constructivist approaches in early childhood education, and that can operate as a curriculum module in conjunction with a variety of different preschool curricula. This study confirmed that it can contribute to promoting learning, development, and school readiness for low-income and otherwise disadvantaged children.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.01.006

Cites

86 of 86 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Storytelling can promote writing skills by encouraging children to create their own stories, modify stories that they have heard, and even write plays based on familiar tales.

    “Storytelling can also promote writing skills by encouraging children to create their own stories, modify stories that they have heard, and even write plays based on familiar tales (Cassell 2004;Nicolopoulou et al. 2015).”

    From Supporting Literacy and Digital Literacy Development in Early Childhood Education Using Storytelling Activities (2018) · cites this paper as Nicolopoulou et al. 2015

    The Storytelling and Story-Acting Practice section (page unavailable) describes children composing stories, reworking elements of stories they have heard, and having an adult write down their dictation. The Discussion reports improved print and word awareness, but the paper does not establish improved writing skills or describe children writing plays based on familiar tales; they act out stories instead. (LLM, conf=0.87)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

3 of the 89 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 5

  1. Invernizzi M Sullivan A Meier J Swank L Phonological awareness literacy screening: PreK teacher’s manual 2004 University of Virginia Press Richmond, VA
  2. Paley VG The boy who would be a helicopter: The uses of storytelling in the classroom 1990 Harvard University Press Cambridge, MA
  3. Schweinhart LJ Weikart DP Lasting differences: The HighScope Preschool Curriculum Comparison study through age 23 (Monographs of the HighScope Educational Research Foundation 1997 12 HighScope Press Ypsilanti, MI
  4. Smith MW Dickinson DK Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO) toolkit, research edition 2002 Paul H. Brookes Baltimore, MD
  5. Wilson S Farran DC Lipsey MW Turner K The effect of Tools of the Mind curriculum on children’s achievement and self-regulation 6 2012 Paper presented at Head Start’s 11th National Research Conference Washington, DC

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Nicolopoulou, A., Cortina, K. S., Ilgaz, H., Cates, C. B., & de Sá, A. B.
Affiliations
  • Lehigh University (US)
  • University of Michigan (US)
  • Bilkent University (TR)
  • New York University (US)
Corresponding author
Nicolopoulou, Ageliki
ORCID
Venue
Early Childhood Research Quarterly
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2015
Volume
31
Pages
147-162
ISSN
0885-2006 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.01.006
PMC
PMC4391821
OpenAlex
W2037066680
Cited by
195
References
89
Citations by year
2026: 24 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 17 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 1 · 2013: 1
FWCI
43.20
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
Locations
  • Early Childhood Research Quarterly (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Bilkent University Institutional Repository (Bilkent University) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health
  • Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R21HD046909)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Education › Early Childhood Education and Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
Keywords
storytelling, narrative skills, spoken language, emergent literacy, social competence, school readiness, pretend play, self-regulation, print awareness, vocabulary, early childhood curriculum, disadvantaged children

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review