What is a story?

Despite the fact that the main emphasis of my research was on “story,” I neglected to ask these children in pre-interviews what a “story” was to them.

I did ask them if they were “good” at writing and telling stories. All of them said they were. When asked what made a good story, most of their answers, if they could verbalize an answer to this question, reflected their classroom interactions with their teachers.
They were good story tellers because:
I write neatly - Arianna
I plan and then write – Trace (reflected later in his teacher’s description of him that he often goes off on tangents when writing instead of sticking to a plan.
I write every day which made you get “better and better.” - Chosen
The pictures and words – Bryce,
I just am – Trace
I have a beginning, and end and a middle – Jaidyn


Only Chosen, who likely has few positive writing interactions with his teacher in school, answered this question by sharing a home writing incident: where lists and stories he makes at home are stapled to the wall. Otherwise, their description of writing and storytelling stayed in the school realm as much as possible, even though I was able to lead Arianna into talking about telling her little cousins stories.

These students’ answers were highly contextualized. I was a “teacher” in their environment. When I interviewed them, we were sitting in the hallway outside the first grade classroom hub. So their thinking about stories and the answers to my questions were filtered through a school context as well.

Supporting this theory about their school context filter were there answers to what they liked to write about. Most of them reported that they liked to write about what they did that weekend, or what happened at recess. These of course were the assigned writing experiences that dominated the first grade curriculum at the school. Bryce was a negative case in this instance, because he talked about enjoying writing about aliens. However, I was soon to learn that Bryce was a boy with a head full of stories that he generated on his own and were just bursting to get out. He was also the one student who, without my severe attempts at leading, expressed a good story as having an audience element.

When asked in is pre-interview what made a good story, besides the previously mentioned statement, he also said, “when they get it.”

Since he has a bend toward alien stories and other fantastical realms, I can see where he may have had trouble in the past with parents and friends and his brand of storytelling.