scholarly journals Narrative skills in preschool and first grade children

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Athansiou Kanellou ◽  
Eugenia Athansiou Korvesi ◽  
Asimina Ralli ◽  
Aggeliki Mouzaki ◽  
Fay Antoniou ◽  
...  

The aim of the study was to investigate the developmental path of narrative skills of preschool and primary school children. Two hundred thirty seven Greek-speaking children from various regions of Greece participated in the study. They were separated in three age groups: 4-5, 5-6 and 6-7 years old. Retelling and narrative production skills were evaluated. Correlations between the two narrative skills were investigated. Four illustrated stories were used (two stories for retelling and two stories for narrative production).Children’s narratives were collected and transcribed from the recordings. Then, narratives were coded and assessed according to certain criteria: microstructure/ cohesion (conjunction and lexical cohesion) and macrostructure/ coherence (story grammar and temporal sequencing of actions and events). The findings revealed that narratives of older children tended to be better according to the story structure criteria in comparison to narratives produced by younger children. In addition, the qualitative analysis of children’s narratives demonstrated the different narrative levels (labeling, listing, connecting, sequencing and narrating) proposed by Stadler and Ward (2005). Children of all age groups performed better in retelling test compared to narrative production test. The results also revealed differences in performance in relation to gender (girls performed better than boys). Finally, a statistically significant correlation between children’s performance in retelling and narrative production skills was found. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of narrative abilities. Implications for research, theory and educational purposes are also discussed.

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noura Marouf ◽  
Adi Irfan Che-Ani ◽  
Norngainy Mohd Tawil

<p>School grounds are critical places because they are some of the few play areas available for children to develop and transfer peer culture. Moreover, school playtime, which is often called “recess”, offers children daily opportunities for physical activity in the outdoor environment. During school years, age has always been presented in the studies on children as a fundamental component of their development. Children of different ages are interested in different play styles and have various play priorities. However, few studies have compared play patterns in children within age groups. This study explores play behaviors during recess in elementary school children overall, and secondly examines the differences in the play behavior of children, considering first graders who enter elementary school and the last graders. This study uses quantitative design and naturalistic observational approaches. An ethnogram recorded the observations of the play activities preferences of the children. The results of this study showed that girls spend the majority of their recess talking and socializing with peers generally. Older children, particularly those in grades fifth and sixth, spend more time socializing than other age groups. Children in the first grade spent much time in active free play, such as chasing and running, during recess and tend use their playtime as an opportunity to perform a physical activity; therefore the significance of combining recess and provisions for physical activity to reach health goals becomes clearer. These findings are interesting considerations for further research; such information could help to develop appropriate interventions to improve the recess.</p>


2015 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Agnė Blažienė

The paper deals with the narrative production of developing Lithuanian bilingual children (L1 – Lithuanian, L2 – English). The material was collected in four Lithuanian language schools based in London. The study employs the method of story generation. During the experiment, the participants were asked to tell a story according to a 6 picture sequence Cat Story (Hickmann 2003; Gagarina et al. 2012). There were 100 Lithuanian bilingual children (4-10 years old) from middle-class families involved in the experiment. They all lived in London and attended private Lithuanian schools (~3-6 hours per week). The narratives were recorded, transcribed and morphologically annotated for an automatic analysis of narrative language using CHILDES software. During the analysis, the general productivity and lexical diversity (the number of words, the number of utterances, mean length of utterance, type/token ratio) of the narratives were investigated.The results obtained demonstrate significant differences in productivity and lexical diversity among six age groups. The narratives of older children have been found to be longer; they also include more words, consist of more utterances, which on average are longer. A comparison of bilingual and monolingual children's narratives has revealed that bilingual children are capable of producing more words, while the lexical diversity of nouns, verbs and adjectives is similar in bilingual and monolingual children’s narratives or, in some cases, higher in the narratives of monolingual children. These indicators of productivity and lexical diversity suggest that the native Lithuanian language acquired in a bilingual environment is similar to the Lithuanian language acquired in a monolingual language environment.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
NATALIA GAGARINA

ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to trace the dual language development of the narrative macrostructure in three age groups of Russian–German bilingual children and to compare the performance of simultaneous and sequential bilinguals. Fine-grained analyses of macrostructure included three components: story structure, story complexity, and internal state terms. Oral narratives were elicited via the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives. Fifty-eight Russian–German speaking bilingual children from three age groups participated: preschoolers (mean age = 45 months) and elementary school pupils (mean age first grade = 84 months, mean age third grade = 111 months); and there were 34 simultaneous and 24 sequential bilinguals. The results showed significant improvement for all three components of macrostructure between the preschool and first-grade period. Additional significant development from first to third graders was found only for story complexity in Russian. This is explained by the Russian curriculum explicitly teaching narrative skills during early literacy training. In the two older groups, simultaneous bilinguals showed advantages over sequential bilinguals, for story complexity only. This finding suggests considering bilingual type when evaluating narrative skills of bilinguals. The results indicate cross-language association of only some components of narrative score across languages. The findings support the examination of various constituents of macrostructure when evaluating its development as well as the progression of narrative skills.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Marjanca Kos ◽  
Janez Jerman

This research examined the ways in which children observe flowering plants, namely: which features they perceive as significant, whether the skill of observing flowering plants develops with age, and what is the difference between genders. The research involved 174 children: 89 children aged 5 and 85 children aged 10 who were given the task of choosing the plant they recognised as the same as each of the 10 given test plants among a total of 37 plants which looked more or less similar to the test plants. The analysis of the plant combinations the children most frequently mismatched showed, that colour is the feature to which they attribute the most importance. Shape turned out to be considered more important to the children than size. Older children revealed better plant observation skills than younger ones with the girls achieving better results than the boys in both age groups. The findings show that children's observation skills develop with age, and corroborate the need to support the development of observation in the educational process. Keywords: biology education, observation skills, plant characteristics, preschool children, primary school children.


1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera F. Gutierrez-Clellen ◽  
Aquiles Iglesias

Forty-six Spanish-speaking children distributed among three age groups (4:0–4:11, 6:0–6:11, and 8:0–8:11 years) were shown a short silent film and asked to tell the investigator what happened in the movie. All narratives were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis. The stories of older children contained more narrative actions and included more mental state/goal causes than those of younger children. With increasing age, children's narratives showed a decrease in the use of two-clause causal sequences, an increase in the use of three-clause causal sequences, and a decrease in the proportion of unrelated statements. The variability in the types of causal links manifested in the stories suggests that absence of certain types of interclausal connections should not be interpreted as reflecting cognitive or comprehension deficits.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (6) ◽  
pp. 533-537
Author(s):  
Lorenz von Seidlein ◽  
Borimas Hanboonkunupakarn ◽  
Podjanee Jittmala ◽  
Sasithon Pukrittayakamee

RTS,S/AS01 is the most advanced vaccine to prevent malaria. It is safe and moderately effective. A large pivotal phase III trial in over 15 000 young children in sub-Saharan Africa completed in 2014 showed that the vaccine could protect around one-third of children (aged 5–17 months) and one-fourth of infants (aged 6–12 weeks) from uncomplicated falciparum malaria. The European Medicines Agency approved licensing and programmatic roll-out of the RTSS vaccine in malaria endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa. WHO is planning further studies in a large Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme, in more than 400 000 young African children. With the changing malaria epidemiology in Africa resulting in older children at risk, alternative modes of employment are under evaluation, for example the use of RTS,S/AS01 in older children as part of seasonal malaria prophylaxis. Another strategy is combining mass drug administrations with mass vaccine campaigns for all age groups in regional malaria elimination campaigns. A phase II trial is ongoing to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of the RTSS in combination with antimalarial drugs in Thailand. Such novel approaches aim to extract the maximum benefit from the well-documented, short-lasting protective efficacy of RTS,S/AS01.


1997 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-138
Author(s):  
G. A. Young ◽  
D. G. H. James ◽  
K. Brown ◽  
F. Giles ◽  
L. Hemmings ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Jackie Shinwell ◽  
Ellen Finlay ◽  
Caitlin Allen ◽  
Margaret Anne Defeyter

In Northern Ireland, nearly 30% of children are thought to be at risk of going hungry in the summer holidays when they are unable to access free school meals. Community groups, voluntary groups, local authorities, and faith groups have responded to this concern by developing and delivering holiday programmes that enable children from low-income families to take part in activities and access food. The current study used purposive sampling to investigate children’s and young people’s views of holiday provision, from across three holiday clubs, in Northern Ireland. Both primary school children (n = 34; aged 4–11) and secondary school children (n = 31; aged 12–17) showed high levels of awareness of poverty and food insecurity and associated pressures and stresses on households. Importantly, children and young people did not feel stigmatised about attending holiday provision, suggesting a positive and inclusive culture towards holiday club attendance. Children reported that they enjoyed the range of activities provided at holiday clubs and reported that attendance improved their self-confidence, especially for some older children, who acted as peer mentors to younger attendees, helped them to develop new skills, and provided them with opportunities to socialise with peers in a safe environment, out with their normal social groupings in school. Older children showed a high level of shrewdness and knowledge of sectarian divides in communities but spoke positively about how different religious or cultural backgrounds did not matter in terms of meeting and making new friends in holiday club settings. In terms of food provision, the findings of this study suggest that further work needs to be done to support children to access and eat healthy, nutritious food.


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. e039243
Author(s):  
Adam Gyedu ◽  
Barclay T Stewart ◽  
Easmon Otupiri ◽  
Kajal Mehta ◽  
Peter Donkor ◽  
...  

ObjectiveWe aimed to describe the incidence of childhood household injuries and prevalence of modifiable household risk factors in rural Ghana to inform prevention initiatives.Setting357 randomly selected households in rural Ghana.ParticipantsCaregivers of children aged <5 years.Primary and secondary outcome measuresChildhood injuries that occurred within 6 months and 200 metres of the home that resulted in missed school/work, hospitalisation and/or death. Sampling weights were applied, injuries were described and multilevel regression was used to identify risk factors.ResultsCaregivers from 357 households had a mean age of 35 years (SD 12.8) and often supervised ≥2 children (51%). Households typically used biomass fuels (84%) on a cookstove outside the home (79%). Cookstoves were commonly <1 metre of the ground (95%). Weighted incidence of childhood injury was 542 per 1000 child-years. Falls (37%), lacerations (24%), burns (12%) and violence (12%) were common mechanisms. There were differences in mechanism across age groups (p<0.01), but no gender differences (p=0.25). Presence of older children in the home (OR 0.15, 95% CI 0.09 to 0.24; adjusted OR (aOR) 0.26, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.54) and cooking outside the home (OR 0.28, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.42; aOR 0.25, 95% CI 0.13 to 0.49) were protective against injury, but other common modifiable risk factors (eg, stove height, fuel type, secured cabinets) were not.ConclusionsChildhood injuries occurred frequently in rural Ghana. Several common modifiable household risk factors were not associated with an increase in household injuries. Presence of older children was a protective factor, suggesting that efforts to improve supervision of younger children might be effective prevention strategies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-489
Author(s):  
Emilia Carlsson ◽  
Jakob Åsberg Johnels ◽  
Christopher Gillberg ◽  
Carmela Miniscalco

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