Story Based Activities Enhance Literacy Skills in Preschool Children

We investigated the impact of story based activities on literacy skills in pre-school children. The efficacy of story based activities program were tested by literacy skills survey test. Results showed that, the scores of overall literacy skills and all subsets skills in the study group (n=45) were statistically significantly higher than the control group (n=41) (57.88 vs 27.72 p<0.000). We concluded that "Story-Based Activities" implemented for total 30 hours within 6 weeks, significantly enhanced reading/writing, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, vocabulary and pronunciation in preschool children. We recommend the integration of the story based activity to the standard educational program to boost the literacy skills in preschool children.


Introduction
In pre-school period, different methods and techniques are used in order to enable children learn and use the concepts in a more permanent way, and to support them in all areas of their development [23].Stories, as an essential learning tools about life, knowledge, feelings, culture and morality, serve various purposes, including conceptual understanding, receptive and expressive language development, thinking skills and aesthetics [3,13].Through the different story types of myths, fantasy, adventure, fiction and non-fiction, the life will be enriched in a realistic and creative way [4].Stories help children to understand the world that they live, and to establish a relationship between what they know and experience.
Stories have a bridge function between the languages used in the educational environment starting from an early age and in everyday life, for a developing child.The stories, which are important in the development of pre-school children's communication skills, are the basis of pre-school education programs [16,21].Though stories appropriate for the children's level, education is given in an interesting and enjoyable form particularly for Turkish language training activities [24].Stories fascinate the children by supporting their world of fantasy and imagination.Story experiences enrich children's imaginative games, and also help them to discover their senses in a safe environment and to realize their fears [4].Quality stories support the creation of mental images as they can also generate an interest in the language for children [15].
Stories are defined as "the best possible method" which supports the development of literacy skills [17].Listening to the stories and speaking regularly about stories, helps the formation of the pleasure of reading in children [18].The child, who finds answers to his/her reality in the book, starts to grasp meaning and value from what he/she reads or listens to.By crowning the reading activity with producing and creating, children will be self-directed to reading habit.For these reasons, the stories written for children are effective educational tools in gaining reading habit [11,16].It has been identified in the studies that, the stories improve word and concept development as well as developing the ability of narration.In this respect, reading or telling stories to children will develop their speaking and listening skills.These two basic skills are the most important ones that are necessary for a child to gain literacy abilities [12,18].
As the stories necessitate the utilization of a more complex language than it is required in daily spoken language, they facilitate the effective usage of verbal language skills.Stories establish multilateral learning outcome such as thinking, training, generating and expressing ideas and solving problems [1,11].In addition, skills and competences of children such as learning about concepts of narration, expanding their knowledge about the world, holding the imagination more vivid, learning the language of the books, and being more practical to use language are supported by such programs [9].
We have unfortunately observed following setbacks in the current practice of using stories in the pre-school program 1) Stories are generally used in the traditional story telling form, Story Based Activities Enhance Literacy Skills in Preschool Children 2) Stories are employed only during Turkish activities, 3) story telling is not associated with other activities such as drama, literacy and play, 4) stories are not presented in a systematic and regular way.From this point of view, we aimed to design a story based program to overcome those setbacks in the pre-school practice.
The story based activity program has following features 1) story telling is associated with various activities including drama, play, literacy, science, creativity, math, music and movement activities, 2) Different methods and techniques are employed for a given activity (e.g.costumes are included to the drama), 3) activities are presented in three phases from basic to complicated level 4) The program is regularly applied one hour per day, 5 hours per week, and total 30 hours for 6 weeks.
This research has been conducted in order to investigate the effects of presented story based activities on literacy skills of 61-66 months old pre-school children.

Methodology
This research has been carried out in order to investigate the effect of story based activities on literacy skills of 61-66 months old children.In this part of the study which has been conducted in accordance to with this purpose, research model, working group, data collection tools and analysis of data are presented.

Research Model
In this study, pre-test/post-test control group research design has been applied in order to analyze the effect of story based activities on 61-66 months old children who attend to preschool.Experimental researches are aimed to examine the differences which were created by researcher on dependent variable.In experimental research designs, the main aim is to examine the cause and effect relationship which is created between variables.In this research, without unbiased assignment, two groups were matched in terms of literacy skills [8].The study was carried out without equal numbers of children in accordance with control-group pre-test/post-test design [7].As, attempting to equalize the number of subjects in the experimental and control groups might lead to data loss and other problems in the event of the exclusion of some children from the class.

Study Group
Study group of is consisted of the 61-66 months old children, with normal development, who attend to the independent preschools affiliated to the Ministry of Education in the district of Kecioren, Ankara in 2015-2016 academic year.Study group included a total of 86 children (experiment n=45; control n=41) who were selected by random sampling method, and not previously received any special education program.

Data Collection Tools
In this study, as data collection tools, "General Information Form" was used in order to collect general information about children and "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children", which was developed by Yazıcı [25] and the validity and reliability study was accomplished, was used.
Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" was developed and used in Turkey by Yazıcı [25] to assess the development of literacy skills in children.Summary descriptions for the subtests and the sub-dimensions are as follows.
Reading Skills Subtest: In this sub-test, the child is asked to define and or identify an object, an action, a symbol of the letters either by naming or indicating by finger.Reading sub-test consists of three sub-dimensions and 70 items.
Alphabet Knowledge: This sub-dimension examines the ability of identifying letters or words, saying words about letters, and matching letters.This sub-dimension consists of 30 items.
Phonological Awareness: This sub-dimension tests the ability of identifying rhythm, counting and repeating syllables of words, counting vowels of words, pointing out first and last vowels of words, combining and dividing syllables and replacement of syllables.This sub-dimension consists of 21 items.
Vocabulary and Pronunciation: This sub-dimension examines ability to define objects or actions by expressing verbal definitions of object's features or selecting visual images of objects or movements.Besides, pronunciation skill of frequently used objects and motions are also tested.This sub-dimension consists of 19 items.
Writing Skills Subtest: This subtest examines the pre-writing skills, the ability to differentiate writing from sketching, to connect the dots, to write on different grounds, to write the letter, word and sentence that's shown, to write her/his own name.This subtest consists of 13

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To achieve family participation, parent involvement form was sent home each week.

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The program is regularly applied one hour per day, 5 hours per week, and total 30 hours for 6 weeks. "Story-Based Activities" consists of 30 unique events of storytelling, story completion, creating a story, re-telling the story, illustrating a story and creating a new story from the pictures.
Following of the preparation process of Story Based Activities, program has been introduced to 5 experts.Experts to assessed the comprehensibility and relevance of the activities with the aim of program by using the triple rating scale such as "Never", "Average", "Full".
After obtaining expert opinions, they were combined in a form and assessed by considering opinions of experts and analyzes were performed for each question.The percentages of compromise which are known as the reliability of raters were calculated to determine level of the harmony between experts.To determine the consensus of researchers and experts on the assessment, the formula was used which was indicated by Miles and Haberman (1994).According to this formula was calculated as Percentage of Compromise = [Consensus / (Consensus + Dissidence)] x 100] [2].As a result of this calculation, it was indicated that there was a harmony above 90% among experts, suggested changes for "Story Based Activities" was done and shaped in final version and got ready for the main implementation.

Data Collection
In order to assess the effects of "Story Based Activities" on literacy skills "Research Test of Literacy Skills for 61-72 months Old Children" pretest was implemented in experimental and control group in 7 th -11 th

Data Analysis
The data of research was resolved via SPSS statistical program.In the study, descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage assessment of the demographic characteristics of the children were used.Scores of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" was examined in order to see there was either normal distribution or not by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.This test is recommended in group which is greater than 25 (n> 25) [19].As a result of Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test, it was seen that data was non-normally distributed (p<0.05).On the other hand, it was indicated that variances did not distribute homogenously (F=24.32;p=.000) and for this reason, nonparametric tests were used in the analysis of data.
As a result of normality test, in analysis of data, comparisons between groups were analyzed via Mann Whitney U-Test and comparisons of intergroup were analyzed via Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, because the scores of pretest and final test of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" was non-normally distributed in experimental and control group.While Mann-Whitney U-Test examines showing differences in a meaningful way from each of the scores obtained from unrelated samples, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test assess the scores of related two measurement set whether it differ or not [6].While analyzing differences between categorical variables, it has been established that 0.01 was used as significance level, in case of p<0.01, there is a difference in meaning between groups, in case of p>0.01, there is no difference in meaning between groups [8].Additionally, in the study, the covariance analysis (ANCOVA) was also used to determine whether the differences in the posttest scores of experimental and control groups after the experimental procedure depend on pretest scores.In a research, the covariance analysis, is a technique, which provides statistical control of another variable or variables called covariate that have correlation with the dependent variable, other than the independent variable of Story Based Activities Enhance Literacy Skills in Preschool Children which the effect is tested [14].The aim of implementation of this test is pulling out the changes caused by the covariate from the posttest scores that are considered as the dependent variables, and afterwards determining whether the change in the dependent variable is due to the change in the independent variable, or not [22].In the analysis, the posttest scores are considered as the dependent variable, the group variable as fixed variable, and the pretest scores as covariate.
The data collected with "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" was evaluated and the statistical analysis was conducted.The pretest/posttest scores that the children participants in the experiment and control groups have got from the "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" was recorded to the Record Forms.The required statistical analyses were done by recording the data on the Record Forms to the computer.
 In order to test whether the experimental and control groups was received from the same universe; the comparisons of the average scores of the "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" pretest were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U-test.

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In order to determine whether there is a significant difference between the pre-and post-test score averages of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" in each group, the Wilcoxen Signed Rank Test was applied.

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In order to determine whether the "Story Based Activities" affected the literacy skills in children, Mann Whitney U-Test was applied to compare post-test score averages of the experiment and control groups.

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The posttest scores of experiment and control groups were also compared by covariance analysis in order to determine any significant effect occurred when the effect of the pretest scores are eliminated [5].

Findings
Demographic features of the experimental and control group were similar as presented in Table 1.
Pre-test scores of the study group were comparable with that of the control group (Table -2).There was no statistically significant difference (p>.05) between the pre-test scores of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" in the study and control group: Reading Skills (U=858.00,p>.05), Writing Skills (U=781.00,p>.05) and overall scale, LSST (U=816.00,p>.05).Post-test results were obtained at the end of the program.Post-test scores statistically significant increased compared to pre-test scores of literacy skill tests in the study group (Table -3).There was a significant difference between the pre-test and posttest average scores in the Alphabet Knowledge subscale (Z = -5.85,p<.01), Phonological Awareness subscale (Z=-5.61,p<.01), Vocabulary and Pronunciation subscale (Z = -5.80,p<.01), Reading Skills (Z = -5.84,p<.01) sub test, Writing Skills sub test (Z = -5.15,p<.01) in the overall scale LSST (Z = -5.84,p<.01) of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children".As the result of the analysis, it was determined that, the average of the scores obtained after the experimental procedures have shown a significant increase in all of the subscales, subtests and overall of the scale.

Story Based Activities Enhance Literacy Skills in Preschool Children
In the control group, post-test results were statistically significant higher compared to pre-test scores of literacy skill tests (Table-4).There was significant difference between the average scores derived from the: "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" for the control group; Alphabet Knowledge subscale (Z=-5.06,p<.01), Phonological Awareness subscale (Z=-2.75,p<.01), Vocabulary and pronunciation dimensions (Z= -4.84, p<.01) Reading Skills (Z=-5.26,p<.01), Writing Skills Subtests (Z=-2.64,p<.01) and LSST of the overall scale (Z=-5.85,p<.01).In the control group, increases in the post-test scores were not remarkable compared to post-test scores the study group (Table -3).
Post-test scores of two groups were compared (Table 5).There was a striking difference in favor of the experimental group between the average ranks obtained from all sub tests (Table -5).As seen in Table 5; the post-test results were statistically significantly higher in all sub-tests compared to that of post-test results of the control group: Alphabet Knowledge subscale (U=474.00,p<.01), Phonological Awareness subscale (Z=239.00,p<.01), Vocabulary and pronunciation subscale (Z=396.00,p<.01), Reading Skills (Z=282.50,p<.01) and Writing Skills (Z=574.50,p<.01) subtests and the full scale of LSST( Z=275.50, p<.01).In order to have a better visual understanding of the difference regarding the pre-test/posttest results between the experiment group that the "Story Based Activities" are implemented and control group that no action is taken, a line chart was utilized.
After the difference between the average scores, the covariance analysis was used in order to determine whether there was still a significant difference between the posttest scores of the experiment and control groups, when the effect of the pre-test was removed [5].In the analysis, posttest scores are considered as dependent variables, group variables as fixed variables and the pre-test scores as covariates, and analytical results were shown in Table 6.It was determined that there was a significant difference between the posttest scores of the children (F 1-83 =360.98;p=0.000).According to this results obtained, the children's.
"Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" posttest results have a significant difference regarding their position of being in experiment and control group.

Discussion
We investigated the impact of story based activity program to literacy skills of preschool children.Story based program was integrated to a standard educational program and effect was tested by "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children".Study results showed that story based program significantly improved literacy skills in all domains as well as overall scores.
The children from the experiment and control groups were from the same universe before the "Story Based Activities" were implemented, since pretest scores from the "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" of experiment and control group were comparable, In other words, children in the control group and in the experiment group are considered to be similar in terms of the measured characteristic.
Stories are extremely important for children to understand the language's structure and the wording.When the related literature in the field is reviewed, it is stated that the stories serve for a variety of purposes such as; comprehension, supporting receiving and expressive language skills for the children [3].Short repeated stories allow the children to capture the rhythm of the language at an early age.The children may catch the opportunity of learning how the language is used and developed, creating the understanding of writing, recognizing the new wording and grammar structure via stories.Therefore, the stories are of great importance in bringing awareness to literacy skills to children [4].In accordance with that notion, story based program notably enhanced literacy skills in pre-school children as presented in table 3.
Accordingly, it can be said that the "Story Based Activities" effective in increasing the children's skills of literacy in appositive way.The "Story Based Activities's, were implemented via different techniques such as storytelling, story completion, creating a story, re-telling the story, illustrating a story and creating a new story from the pictures.The program was also integrated with different activity types such as art, drama, mathematics, science, and environment was enhanced to raise the perception of the children.Story based activities remarkably supported the alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, vocabulary, and verbal language and writing skills of children at the end of the program.Program was given as one hour every day for 5 days a week.Its continuation for 6 weeks was enough to make a observable difference in the literacy skills of pre-school children.
We suppose, enriched features of the story based program with different methods and techniques, and interactive participation or children, were critical for the scores of the "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" to be significantly different in the favor of the post-test.
In their study named "Analyzing Gülten Dayıoğlu's Child Stories According to the 'Story Map' Method and a General Evaluation", Gökçe & Sis [11]; the result that, the story map method has an important role in children's listening, speaking, literacy development, have been reached.
Petrilli, Logan, Sawyer & Justice [20] in their study that they examined the relationship between literacy skills and story reading, they have found out that especially the knowledge of writing and letter naming skills were higher in children that stories are read.
Eti & Aktaş Arnas [10], in their study that they have conducted in order to analyze the effect of the story based creative drama activities on the verbal language development of the children of four ages, they have determined that the story based creative drama activities induce a significant increase in the four years old children's utilization of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions, and also increase the total number of sentences, words, numbers, and the average number of words in a sentence that are used by the children.
It is important to note that the pre-test and posttest scores obtained from the control group also showed a significant increase in all of the subscales, subtests and overall of the scale.
According to this conclusion, it can be said that the standard program of the Ministry of Education, which is applied to the children of control group by their class teachers, also influenced the literacy skills of the children in a positive direction.Such a result is not unexpected and might be related to the class teachers' implementation of the reading and writing preparatory activities to support the literacy skills, and the effective participation of the children in the learning process.However the increase in the study group LSST scores is far beyond the increase in the control group.
In addition, a statistically significant improvement induced by "Story Based Activities" in the experimental group remained after the pre-test differences were eliminated in study groups (shown in figure -5).
As the result of the covariance analysis, a striking difference is seen, in the favor of the experiment group between the average ranks obtained from sub dimensions, sub tests and the whole of the scale.According to this result, it can be considered that, the reveal compared to control group that no process is implemented regarding the literacy skills of the children.The covariance analysis results that the posttest scores are considered as dependent variables, demonstrate that the experimental process makes a significant difference.
Stories can be considered as the units of speech texts, beyond the sentence level that support listening skills, language and verbal communication in children.These basic skills are of great importance during the development of the children's literacy skills [21].Moreover, the story based activities also enhance vocabulary with their rich content, organize the thinking processes, present complex narrative sequences, provide the children to discover different sentence structures, support the creative thinking skills and development of words and concepts [4].
In consistent with the above notion, the present research findings showed that story based activity was effective in improving the literacy skills of the pre-school children.

Story Based Activities Enhance Literacy Skills in Preschool Children
There was significant difference in favor of the experiment group regarding the literacy skills of the children We suppose that the positive impact of "Story Based Activities" program can be result of 1) carrying out conversations on concepts and words during the story based activities, 2) open-ended questions for events and situations, 3) entertaining children with songs, rhymes, poetry and finger plays, 4) drawing children's attention to some details such as recognizing and discriminating words, using words in a sentence, browsing the front and back side of books, illustrations and authors, 5) involvement of parents in to the process, 6) integration of various activities such as art, drama, math and science in a systematical approach.

Conclusion and Recommendations
As the result of the study, which was carried out in order to reveal the effect of the Story Based Activities on the 61-66 months old kindergarten children's literacy skills; it was identified that, while pre-test scores of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" in experiment and control groups were comparable, post-test scores of experimental group was statistically significantly different from both pre-test results of experimental group and post-test scores of control group.Moreover, the experimental paradigm created a statistically significant difference when the effect of the pretest was removed.
Under the light of the data obtained from the study, we can suggest that The "Story-Based Activities", can be integrated with the other activity areas in pre-school training program to boost the literacy skills in children.
items."Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" has overall 83 items.Validity and Reliability Study: Correlation analysis of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" yielded KR-20 reliability coefficients of Reading skills subtest of KR-20 reliability coefficient is .987,Alphabet Sub-dimension of Reading Skills Subtest of KR-20 reliability coefficient is .946,Phonological Awareness Sub-dimension of KR-20 reliability coefficient is .979,Vocabulary and Pronunciation Sub-dimension of KR-20 reliability coefficient is .989,Writing Skills Subtest of KR-20 reliability coefficient s .829and overall KR-20 reliability coefficient of total test is .985[25, 26].As a result, "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" can be implemented to assess 61-72 months old children in Turkey with high reliability and validity.Story Based Activities Considering the items of "Story-Based Activities"; the "Pre-school Education Program (MEB) [16]." which is implemented by the Ministry of Education for 36-72 months old children, have been examined and associated acquisition and development indicators have been selected.While determining the indicators of acquisition and development, a single area of growth hasn't been kept in the forefront; all areas of development have been supported in accordance with the children's educational needs."Story Based Activities" prepared and implemented for the study has following features. Story telling is associated with various activities including drama, play, literacy, science, creativity, math, music and movement activities,  Different methods and techniques are employed for a given activity (e.g.costumes are included to the drama),  Activities are presented in three phases from basic to complicated level  Play-based learning is central to all activities. Activities were generated based on creative thinking abilities in addition to literacy skills. Objectives to be achieved are included to more than one activity. Story books are included according to their contents; style, size, ratio of picture to text, punto etc.
March 2016.After pretests, in 14 th March-22 nd April 2016, "Story Based Activities" was implemented in experimental group.MEB Preschool Education Program which is based on literacy skill was implemented by their teacher in control group."Story Based Activities" was implemented considering the properties of materials in program.Besides, during the implementation of activities, activities were recorded by camera and photos were taken.After the completion of the program, "Research Test of Literacy Skills for 61-72 months Old Children" was implemented as post-test in experimental and control group in 25 th -29 th April 2016.

Table 1 .
Demographic features and general information of the study group

Table 2 .
Mann-Whitney U-Test Results That Show the Comparison of the Averages of Total Pre-Test Scores, and Sub Tests of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" for Experiment and Control Group Children

Table 3 .
Wilcox Signed Rank Test Results that Show the Comparison of the Pre-test/Posttest Averages for "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" of the Experiment Group Children

Table 4 .
The Results of Wilcox Signed Rank Test, Which Shows the Comparison of the Pre-test/Posttest Score Averages of "Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children" for the Children of the Control Group

Table 5 .
Mann Whitney U-Test Results Regarding the Averages of the Total Posttest Score Differences, and the Sub-Tests and Sub-Dimensions of the Literacy Skills Survey Test for 61-72 Months Old Children of Experiment and Control Groups

Table 6 .
The Covariance Analysis Results That the Posttest Scores Are Considered As Dependent Variables