Understanding and telling stories are behaviors socially and academically relevant. However, in establishing these behaviors the verbal communities usually do not emphasize the teaching of their structure. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of a story structure by teaching procedure on the discrimination of its defining elements in new stories. Eight children, six boys and two girls, ages ranging from six to eight years, participated in the project. A multiple baseline across categories was used and this required the assessment of all categories prior to the beginning of the teaching phase and after the teaching of each category. The teaching was divided in two phases: Category Definition and Category Identification. The procedure was effective in teaching the structural categories of the story and in promoting the discrimination of the defining elements of the categories in new stories.
Programed instruction; Storytelling; Fundamental education
