Do you love story grammar elements and narrative intervention as much as I do? Share below if you’re already a fan! I’m always looking for fun ways to incorporate narratives into my therapy and love to hear everyone’s creative ideas!

My readers know that I am a huge fan of narrative intervention, teaching story grammar elements, and literacy-based speech therapy.

The fact is, we can achieve so much by teaching our kids about narratives in a systematic way!

I was thrilled to read some newly published research emphasizing this fact!

Petersen, Staskowski, Spencer, Foster, & Brough (2022) recently published some research once again extolling the virtues of narrative intervention.

What’s the problem?

Students are struggling in reading and writing. A big part of reading and writing is the comprehension and use of increasingly complex language.

In fact, early oral language abilities are correlated with future reading comprehension and writing abilities. Oral language actually has a bigger impact on reading comprehension than working on text comprehension strategies! Oral language skills particularly help improve vocabulary and grammar skills.

So, no matter if you’re working with younger students, or older students, oral language is impacting everyone.

Ok, oral language matters, but why story grammar and narrative intervention?

Narrative language is basically how we understand and express personal, historical, and fictional events. It’s the kind of language required at school, which is a little different than communication at home. Narratives include rich vocabulary and complex syntax and grammatical structures.

Working on and with stories improves kids’ attention to detail and working memories!

So, what’s the new research?

This new randomized control group study of provided general large group story grammar instruction in kindergarten classrooms, then took smaller groups of students who struggled to give them focused intervention.

What did they find?

• Students’ personal stories improved
• Improved expository retells
• And narrative skills improved as well

Story Grammar and Narrative Intervention Resources

This study focused on the Story Champs commercial product, but there are similar products available, including some of my own narrative-based intervention materials, like:

Learning and Identifying Story Grammar Parts in Narratives for Speech Therapy

Creating Narratives from Real Pictures for Speech Therapy

Searching for Home: Narrative-Based Language Intervention Unit – Speech Therapy

So, do you include narratives in your speech therapy intervention? What are some of your best tips and tricks?

Reference

Petersen, D., Staskowski, M., Spencer, T., Foster, M., & Brough, M. (2022) The Effects of a Multitiered System of Language Support on Kindergarten Oral and Written Language: A Large-Scale Randomized Controlled Trial