Constructing stories in kindergarten: Children's knowledge of genre
Date
2011Source
European Early Childhood Education Research JournalVolume
19Issue
1Pages
63-77Google Scholar check
Metadata
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This study investigated the ability of 23 kindergarten children to construct stories drawing upon genre conventions in order to differentiate simple narrative stories, a familiar and often‐visited genre in the kindergarten literacy classroom, and humorous stories, familiar to the children's literacy experiences mostly outside official literacy curriculum. The data collection included two semi‐structured interviews during which children orally created two stories. The findings suggest that in the production of narratives kindergarteners choose to structure them around themselves and their own personal experiences, around other people and their experiences and around known fairy tales. When children are asked to produce humorous stories they demonstrate the ability to employ incongruity, in different forms, violation of rules and violence, as well as humorous symbols. Thus, children produce humorous stories by having their characters act incongruously and empower themselves. Narrative and humorous elements in the stories children produced reveal aspects of generic knowledge and an effort to differentiate their oral texts in order to meet different communicational needs.