Motivating self and others through a whole-school storytelling project: Authentic language & literacy development

Abstract

This study reports on a whole-school project carried out with preschool and primary children, taking a whole-language approach to literacy development, through a storytelling methodology which uses authentic picturebooks and peer modelling. This article presents the results of an exploratory mixed methods study conducted over a three-year period with the older (10-12-year-old) participants in the project (N=27). Within an action research framework, data was collected from field notes of classroom observations, video recorded sessions, questionnaires and interviews with students and teachers. The study aims to assess the motivational effect of the storytelling project on learners, identify the learning outcomes generated and identify strategies that were particularly effective in generating such outcomes. Through a process-oriented approach, the findings verify the motivational effect of the storytelling project. These findings also help bridge the gap between theory and practice in motivational research and contribute to the growing body of literature on the use of authentic picturebooks in the L2 classroom and the potential benefits of peer modelling.

Keywords

• storytelling with picturebooks
• peer modelling
• reading
• authenticity
• early foreign language learning
• preschool and primary