STORY CONSTRUCTION FROM A PICTURE BOOK - AN ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Meaning-making is the foundation of literacy during children's early y ears in school because it involves constructive comprehension from wha t is seen or read or heard. Most assessments of children's literacy de pend on their abilities to decode or write text, which may limit the c omplexity of understanding that can be assessed. We designed a novel a ctivity, Story Construction from a Picture Book, to assess young child ren's abilities to construct meaning independent of decoding skills. T he task requires active processes of comprehending the relations among a series of pictures and composing orally a story that connects the m eaning among events. This study describes the performance of 5- and 6- year-old children on the Story Construction activity and relates their skills to other measures of literacy development undertaken concurren tly, as well as 2 years later. We suggest that activities like the Sto ry Construction activity are valuable assessments of young children's constructive comprehension processes that complement traditional asses sments of emerging literacy skills.