Story Frames for Teaching Literacy: Enhancing Student Learning Through the Power of Storytelling

Mastering the art of storytelling isn’t just a goal for professional writers. Analyzing and creating stories can boost critical literacy skills for all learners—and this comprehensive resource will show teachers and SLPs how.

Aligned with the science of reading, this innovative guidebook reveals how to unlock literacy and learning skills by captivating K–12 students with the power of stories: how they’re structured, how they reflect and change lives, and how students can create their own original narratives. Using dozens of diverse fiction and nonfiction books as vivid examples, you’ll discover how to teach 12 key story elements (Story Frames) in dynamic, fun, and highly visual ways, including Quick Draws, storyboards, and icons that make narrative structure easy to grasp. Then you’ll get in-depth guidance on how to use knowledge of story structure to build core literacy skills—from oral language to reading comprehension—and empower students to write their own personal stories in a variety of genres.

Enhanced with more than 35 adaptable lesson plans and a complete package of online support materials, Story Frames is an accessible pathway to structured literacy that any educator can start using right away. You’ll use it year after year to strengthen your students’ skills and instill a lifelong love of reading and writing in every learner.

STORY FRAMES WILL HELP YOU

• Get started with structured literacy in a fun and engaging way
• Build core literacy skills, including phonological awareness, reading comprehension, oral language, vocabulary, grammar, syntax, narrative development, and expository writing
• Strengthen your existing curriculum with flexible lesson plans and activities aligned with the science of reading
• Effectively teach narrative structure to both struggling and advanced learners
• Teach students in any setting, with practical tips for teletherapy and virtual instruction
• Boost executive function skills by making the writing process comprehensible, meaningful, and manageable
• Empower students with and without disabilities by giving them the tools to tell their own stories

ONLINE MATERIALS: Implement Story Frames effectively with a full package of downloadable materials, including sample storyboards and templates, 40+ handouts and worksheets, game cards, slide decks to use in instruction, 30+ sample story analyses of books for children and young adults, and brief literature guides for applying Story Frames to picture books and to chapter books and novels.

Carolee Dean, M.S., CCC-SLP, CALT, the founder of Word Travel Literacy, specializes in the treatment of dyslexia, other language-based learning differences, and autism. With over twenty years of experience in the public schools, she now focuses on teletherapy, consultation, and resource development. She is a former president of the Southwest Branch of the International Dyslexia Association and an award-winning author of the young adult fiction titles Comfort (Houghton Mifflin), Take Me There (Simon Pulse), and Forget Me Not (Simon Pulse). She frequently combines her knowledge of story structure and learning differences to speak at national and international conferences on the subject of narrative intervention.

Amy Miller, M.A., M.F.A., i-CALP, is the founder and executive director of May Center for Learning, a nonprofit school and outreach center for students with learning differences. She frequently presents to educators, focusing on best practices for students with learning differences, the science of teaching structured reading and writing, and the importance of structuring the learning environment to improve executive functioning skills. Amy successfully advocated for SB 398, a New Mexico state law that mandates universal screening for characteristics of dyslexia and science-based reading instruction for all students. Founder of Dyslexia Justice League, a community organization that connects students with dyslexia with adult mentors, Amy is also the author of The Way I See It, a play and book that celebrates unique points of view, developed in collaboration with students at May Center. Where I Come From, a book that Amy co-authored with May Center students, won the 2014 New Mexico/Arizona Young Adult Book of the Year.

Paula Moraine, M.Ed., is an international teacher, tutor, speaker, and author. She is in private practice in Bel Air, Maryland as an educational consultant, specializing in executive functions, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and autism. She is the author of Helping Students Take Control of Everyday Executive Functions—The Attention Fix and Autism and Everyday Executive Functions.

Mary Jo O’Neill, M.Ed. works as an advocate with families of children with learning disabilities. Her background as a teacher and intervention specialist supports collaboration with teachers, administrators, and school systems to work together to create and implement the best systems and tools for successful learning. Always at the center of the work is the student, as she facilitates collaboration with parents, teachers, and administrators. Her expertise is ensuring all voices are heard, as the process moves forward, always in the best interest of the student.

Lesley Roessing, M.Ed., taught middle school language arts and humanities for over twenty years. She is the former Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and Senior Lecturer in the College of Education of Armstrong University in Savannah, Georgia. She also served as a Literacy Consultant with a K–8 school.

Lesley is the author of The Write to Read: Response Journals that Increase Comprehension; Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed—The Sentences They Saved; No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect; Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically and Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core, and Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum. She has written articles on literacy for a variety of academic journals and has served as editor for Connections, the GCTE award-winning peer-reviewed journal and as a columnist for AMLE Magazine.

William Van Cleave, M.A., is in private practice as an educational consultant and author whose specialties include morphology and written expression. An internationally recognized speaker with an interactive, hands-on presentation style, William has presented on effective teaching practices both in the United States and abroad since 1995. In his career William has consulted with both private and public schools; participated in state multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) writing standards committee work; implemented Trainer of Trainers projects; and written a number of articles and books, including his 2014 Writing Matters: Developing Sentence Skills in Students of All Ages. In addition, William has served as a classroom teacher, tutor, and administrator.

Carol Westby, Ph.D., has published and presented nationally and internationally on play, theory of mind, language-literacy relationships, ADHD, narrative/expository development and facilitation, screen time, children and families who have experienced trauma, and issues in assessment and intervention with culturally/linguistically diverse populations She, has received the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and the Award for Contributions to Multicultural Affairs, and is Board Certified in Child Language and Language Disorders. Dr. Westby has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Geneva College and the University of Iowa’s Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology.