Narrative Intervention 2.0
Updates for Early Intervention
Sue Grogan-Johnson, Ph.D., CCC/SLP
sgrogan1@kent.edu
• Financial Disclosure: I
received a complimentary
conference registration for
this presentation
• Non-Financial Disclosure:
None
• Brief Review
• How do you provide narrative
intervention?
• What’s new?
• Narrative intervention with special
populations
• Resources& Tips
Teach Scripts
Teach
Personal
Narratives
Teach Story
Retell &
Generation
•
simple
complex
Stories
 http://pbskids.org/sesame/games/elmogoes-doctor/
 Act out scripts
 Talk about scripts
 www.thelisteningroom.com
 Older vs. newer experiences
 Adding complexity
 Collecting data
 Extension to emergent literacy
Beginning-Most Interesting Part-Ending
Components of personal narrative
 Model personal narrative
 Visual support (puzzle)
 How to collect data
 Classroom/Generalization
 Extension to emergent literacy activities

Most Interesting
Part
Beginning
Get Attention
“One day”
“Do you know”
“Guess what happened”
Ending
One
Main Idea
When Funny
Scary
Who
Feeling
Ask a question
Let listener know you
are done
Using Story Grammar Elements
 Components
of personal narrative
 Character-Problem-Feeling-Action(Attempt)-Resolution
 Model personal narrative
 Visual supports
( Bliss, L., & McCabe, A., (2012). Personal narratives: Assessment and intervention. Perspectives on Language Learning and Education, 19(4), 130-138.
• Topic Maintenance
• Completeness/Informativeness
• Event Sequencing
• Referencing
Rubric for Scoring Personal Narratives
Adapted from Bliss, L., & McCabe, A., (2012). Personal narratives: Assessment and intervention. Perspectives on Language Learning and Education, 19(4), 130-138.
Student:
Date:
TOPIC MAINTENANCE (student includes only relevant, nontangential narrative related information)
COMPLETENESS/INFORMATIVENESS

Includes essential facts
Partial (Give Examples)
Partial (Give Examples)
YES
NO
Includes optional details for elaboration
YES
NO
N/A

Includes description
YES
NO
N/A

Includes personal evaluation (“he should not have
done that” “he was a bad dog” “I like to fish”)
YES
NO
EVENT SEQUENCING (Student tells story in chronological or
logical sequence)
YES
NO
REFERENCING

Provides identification of individuals
Partial (Give Examples)
PARTIAL (Give Examples)
YES
NO

Provides identification of locations
YES
NO

Provides identification of events
YES
NO

Uses pronouns with correct referents
YES
NO
CONJUNCTIVE COHESION

Uses coordinating conjunctions (and,or,but,so)*
YES
NO
EXAMPLES

Uses subordinating conjunctions (i.e. before, after,
because, when, that, which)*
YES
NO

Uses a clear beginning (i.e. Guess what?” “Do
you know…”)
YES
NO

Uses a clear ending (i.e. “I liked our vacation”)
YES
NO

Signal a change in discourse (i.e. “I wanna tell
you something.” “I don’t know about cats but my
dog…..”)
YES
NO
N/A
YES
NO
PARTIAL(Give Examples)
N/A
POSSIBLE THERAPY TARGETS (Describe the area(s) to focus on during intervention
Topic Maintenance:
Completeness:
Sequence:
Reference:
Cohesion:
• Fluency
NO

FLUENCY (Story is easy to follow. Student does not evidence
multiple language related false starts, corrections,
repetitions, fillers and other mazing behaviors)
• Conjunctive cohesion
YES
Fluency:
Sue Grogan-Johnson, 2015 OSSPEAC Conference
SLP:
 Story

Retell & Generation (Prek- 3rd grade)
Whole-Part-Whole
 Whole
 Story grammar
 Pre-story instruction
 Scaffolded comprehension questions
 Part
 Specific skill drill
 Whole
 Incorporating learned skills
 Retell/Parallel story
• Whole (repeated re-reading)
• Pre-story instruction
• Reading and retell with story grammar markers
• Scaffolded comprehension questions
• Part (story grammar can always be a part activity) http://www.roomonthebroomlive.co.uk/FUN/Activities/c42/p76
• Regular & Irregular past tense verbs
• Nouns, Verbs, Describing words
• Conjunction “and”
• Tier 2 Vocabulary words (grinned, fluttered, terrible, wailed)
• Phonemic awareness
• Social Skills- friends help each other
• Whole https://www.youtube.com/user/roomonthebroomfilm/featured
• Story Retell & Generation ( PreK – grade 3)
• Book Selection
• Electronic Resources
• Ipad interactive stories
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPhJH4qtGq8
• Web sites
• www.storylineonline.net
• http://www.wegivebooks.org/
to Story Generation (Prek- 3rd grade)
 Scaffolding transition
 iPad apps
 https://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/myscene/id421838043?mt=8
 http://www.topappreviews101.com/my-scene-ipadapp-9509.html
 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toontastic/id4046932
82?mt=8
 Transition
Narrative Research with Children with LI (1)
• Narrative Impairment Persists
• How we assess narrative production and
comprehension matters
Research on Early Narrative Development (1)
• Opportunities for children to recount events is important to narrative
development
• Parental style of interaction predicts narrative performance
• Storybook reading supports the development of narrative structure
• Previewing the story & making predictions
• Discussing ideas related to the story as they arise during reading
• Follow-up activities such as retelling, reenactments and reconstructing the story with pictures
• Narrative assessment and intervention must be considered with young
children
RESEARCH ON NARRATIVE ASSESSMENT (1)
• Student performance on narrative tasks are influenced by the types of tasks
used to assess narrative production and comprehension
• Spinillo & Pinto (1994)
• 4,6 &8 year old TD English and Italian speaking children
• 4 different story elicitation conditions: tell a story from a picture the child drew, tell a
story from 3 sequenced picture cards, tell a story with no visual supports, and tell a
story that the examiner would write down and would be read to another student later
• Stories told without picture cues included greater narrative structure
• Picture supported narratives had more context-dependent utterances (this one, that
thing)
RESEARCH ON NARRATIVE ASSESSMENT (4)
• Schneider (1996)
• Studied story construction and retell with 5 & 9 year old students with LI in 4 conditions:
oral (story told with no pictures), oral and pictures were provided for retelling, oral with
pictures for telling and retelling, and pictures only (child told the story using pictures with
no oral version)
• Children used most narrative elements when retelling in the oral only condition. Used the
least narrative elements and more extraneous information in the pictures only condition.
Oral only vs. oral with pictures- mixed result: some significant differences with oral being
better and a general statistical pattern favoring oral only.
• Hypothesized that the use of pictures seemed to distract the students and did not result in
reducing the memory load
• Suggested assessment using oral only and picture only conditions to assess the child’s
ability to retell a story and child’s ability to create a story.
RESEARCH ON NARRATIVE ASSESSMENT (5)
• Schneider & Dube (2005)
• TY K and Grade 2 students retold stories in 3 conditions: oral only, oral with
pictures and picture only
• Both K and Grade 2 students performed worst in the picture only condition
• K students had most story grammar elements in oral + pictures condition
• Grade 2 students had more story grammar elements in both the oral only and
the oral + pictures vs. picture only
• NSD for K students on oral only vs. picture only
• NSD for K students on oral only vs. oral + picture
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR US?(1)
• Compare Apples to Apples
• Story generation and story retelling from a wordless picture book are the
assessment tasks that are most likely to provide a valid picture of the child’s
narrative skills
• Retelling is easier than generation. For Prek students retell is an appropriate
assessment task.
• Remove visual supports during child’s narrative production. Facilitates more
complex narrative structure- best performance for the child
What Does That Mean For Us?
• http://www.languagedynamicsgroup.com/assessments.html
• PreK and School Age Narrative Criterion Referenced
Assessment Tools
• PreK
Benchmark and Progress Monitoring Test of Narrative
Retell
Test of Personal Story Generation
Test of Story Comprehension
Additional Characteristics of Story Retelling &
Generation for Students with SLI and ASD (2)
• Failure to plan(lack of organization)
• Hyper focus on details at the expense of the gist
• Inability to use information from multiple sources
• Difficulty allocating mental resources
• Difficulty answering inference ?s that require
integration of information
Is Narrative Intervention Effective and Evidence Based? (3)
• Majority of available research suggests intervention is effective for
narrative macrostructure and microstructure
• CAUTION! CAUTION! CAUTION!
• Limited number of participants, limited experimental control,
considerable variation in procedures and materials
• Impact of narrative intervention on academic skills is not widely
investigated
• Emerging stage of evidence
NARRATIVE INTERVENTION
WITH SPECIAL POPULATIONS
AAC users, ELLs, Students
with SSDs
Encouraging Narrative Skills in Children who
use AAC
• Limited research
• Single case studies and small group projects
• Soto(2006) single case study with 8 yo student with physical and speechlanguage impairments using a SGD. Baseline narrative consisted of single
nouns, disorganized and heavily reliant upon listener
• Three phases
•
•
•
•
Story retelling using a story map
Tell a personal narrative using Stories About Me (Richman, L. 1989) Fill in the blank scaffolds
Generate a story by selecting cards for each of the primary story grammar elements
Implemented by classroom teacher 3x week for 6 weeks 20-40 minutes per day
Encouraging Narrative Skills in Children who use AAC
• Story Map
•
Strategic Vocabulary Popup
Encouraging Narrative Skills in Children who use AAC
• Results
• In narratives
• Student began using complete sentences
• Student began marking tense
• Increased vocabulary
• In spontaneous conversation
• Student began to control conversation by selecting “think” (for I am
thinking) and “minute” (for give me a minute)
•
Soto, G. (2006). Supporting the development of narrative skills in children who use AAC. SIG 12 Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Vol. 15(2).
7-11. doi:10.1044/aac15.2.7
Intervention Research with Head Start Students (2)
• Oral narrative intervention may be a useful tool to
select goals and for progress monitoring for young
ELLs
• ELLs performance on oral narratives was not related to
standard scores on PPVT or Woodcock Johnson Test
of Cognitive Abilities
Narrative Skills of Children with SSDs, SSDs +LI, and
TY students (6)
• Participants recruited before formal literacy instruction with age range of 3;3-6;6
• Students with SSD >1.25 SD on GFTA-2 + 3 or more phonological error types + normal oral motor
• Students with SSD +LI met above criteria + scaled scores <8 on two subtests of the TOLD:P2 or
CELF-P
• Measures
• Fictional story retell + 6 comprehension questions (3 detail + 3 inference)
• Follow up school age testing (ages 8-12) included: Word attack and word identification, reading
comprehension and written language ability using subtests of standardized assessments
• Outcomes
• Children with SSDs were not different from TYD children on initial narrative assessment
• Differences were noted in answering comprehension questions and story structure but not in ML of
t-units, number of words or different words or amount of support from examiners
Narrative Skills of Children with SSDs, SSDs +LI, and
TY students (6)
• Predictive Ability
• School-age abilities in reading decoding of real words, reading comprehension and written
expression were all predicted by the narrative macrostructure factor.
• Reading decoding of nonsense words was predicted by the narrative microstructure
factor.
• Clinical Implications
• Young children can be taught the organizational elements of narratives
• Narrative assessment is useful with young children to ID children at risk for
difficulty with future academic language skills
• Narratives may assist with generalization and should be incorporated into home
programs
Resources & Tips
Suggestions for Writing a Narrative Goal
• In what length of time + who + will do what (meaningful activity) +under
what conditions + to what level or degree (mastery & number of times
student must demonstrate) + how progress will be measured
• In one academic year, Timmy will retell and create stories that contain 6
main story grammar elements (e.g. setting, initiating event) with the support
of a story grammar cue card with 90% accuracy in 3/5 observations.
• In one academic year, Timmy will tell personal narratives that contain an
introduction, main point and conclusion during conversations with peers and
adults with 90% accuracy in 4/5 observations.
Suggestions for Writing a Narrative Goal
• Given an opportunity to tell a personal stories during natural conversation,
___ will generate a personal story that includes a problem, action and
consequence/ending on 3 consecutive daily opportunities, measured using a
narrative scoring rubric.
• Given a model of a brief fictional story, _____ will retell the story using a
complete episode (problem, action, consequence/ending), and at least 2
subordinate clauses on 3 consecutive daily opportunities, measured using a
narrative scoring rubric.
Gilliam, S., Jackson, C., & Peterson, D. (Nov. 2014). State of the art in narrative assessment and intervention. Paper presented at
the annual conference of the American Speech Language Hearing Association, Orlando, FL.
Resources for Today’s Presentation
• Pinterest
https://www.pinterest.com/slgphd/ei-narratives/
Max and Ruby
http://www.nickjr.com/max-and-ruby/
http://maxandruby.treehousetv.com/ (fun stuff)
References
1.
Boudreau, D., (2008). Narrative abilities: Advances in research and implications for clinical practice. Topics
in Language Disorders, 28(2), 99-114.
2.
Gillam, S., Jackson, C., & Peterson, D. (Nov. 2014). State of the art in narrative assessment and intervention.
Paper presented at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Conference, Orlando, FL.
3.
Petersen, D. (2011). A systematic review of narrative-based language intervention with children who have
language impairment. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 32(4), 207-220.
4.
Schneider, P. (1996). Effects of pictures versus orally presented stories on story retellings by children with
language impairment. AJSLP, 5, 86-96.
5.
Schneider, P., & Dube, R. (2005). Story presentation effects o children’s retell content. AJSLP, 14, 52-60.
6.
Wellman, R., Lewis, B., Freebairn, L., Avrich, A., Hansen, A., & Stein, C. (2011). Narrative ability of children
with speech sound disorders and the prediction of later literacy skills. LSHSS, 42, 561-579.