Chelsea Meyer 1

5/4/14
EDOK-Reading Comprehension Factors
Article: Comprehension Strategy Instruction: Teaching Narrative Text Structure
Awareness
APA reference:
Dymock, S. (2007). Comprehension strategy instruction: Teaching narrative text structure
awareness. The Reading Teacher, 61(2), 161167.
Main Idea:
Comprehension of narrative text is done best when the text is organized into a well-known story
grammar.
Summary: Through the use of story grammars, teacher can teach students grammar, story,
structure, and better comprehension techniques.
Important points:
Important to Classroom Teachers
o Provide overall structure to narrative texts
o Enhance childrens interactions with narratives
o Allows for more specific structure explanations
o Provides for the use of story mapping strategies
o Allows student to learn plot, theme, setting, etc. at earlier grades
o Provides more technical language for student to use
What should students be taught
o Setting= where and when a story takes place
o Characters= classified as major or minor
o How to analyze characters (personality, appearance, compare and contrast etc.)
Chelsea Meyer 2
5/4/14
o How to analyze overall plot:
4 parts:
1. Problem
Response
Action
Outcome
o How to analyze individual episodes
o Theme: the message that underlies the story. It often explains the characters
motives, actions, or comments throughout the story.
o Narratives can also be graphed visually using:
Analysis of Episodes
Story Graphs
Story Webs

Reflection:
Narrative text structure is an imperative idea to teach during the elementary years. As
students go into middle and high school, these concepts will be built upon. Therefore, I do think
that the ideas need to be introduced (even on a basic level) as early as possible. It is very
important for elementary students to understand how a story progresses. By understanding how
plot is structures, students will be able to understand and predict what happens in a story more
easily. This will also help student to comprehend the story. If students know how a story should
progress, then they will know how to interpret the story.
Chelsea Meyer 3
5/4/14
Identifying the theme of a story is also a skill that students need to learn. In order to
reflect and learn from a story, students need to know what the idea of the story was. By teaching
students how to identify theme, the students will be able to better learn from and understand all
future texts.
I definitely think that I will include the visual graphs that were shown in the article. The
most common and most easily understood organizer for elementary students would be the story
web. The students would be able to use this web and pull the plot, characters, setting, and theme
from a story. I believe that having the students fill out this type of organizer would allow them to
better organize their thoughts and gain better understanding of the text. It is also an easy way for
the teacher to check for understanding of the narrative text structure concepts.