Experiential Learning of Future Teachers in Story Dictation for

Early Childhood Education

Winti Ananthia, Charlotte A. Harun, Desiani N. Muliasari

and Endah Silawati

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Kampus Cibiru, Jl. Raya Cibiru Km. 15 Bandung, Indonesia

{winti, charlotte, desianinm, endah_silawati}@upi.edu

Keywords: Story Dictation, Indonesian Kindergarten, Future Teacher, Experiential Learning.

Abstract: This paper is a part of a bigger on-going research. This study investigates the application of story dictation

in the context of kindergarten students learning languages. It focuses on the teachers’ perception towards the

preparation and implementation of story dictation to uncover important steps. The discussion is divided into

two main stages, the preparation stage and the teaching and learning stage. Qualitative method is employed

in the study. The research subjects are three future teachers who implemented story dictation in two

kindergarten classes. Those teachers are asked to apply story dictation to Kindergarten children in one of

Indonesian kindergartens in Bandung. The result of the study reveals some important steps about the

implementation of story dictation. The first stage contains some steps, which are, designing a lesson plan,

developing learning media, selecting story for exposure activity, designing doodle book. In addition, the

second stage includes storytelling as exposure activity, introducing doodle pages, planning story extension,

story dictation, revising the story, publishing the story. The study also reveals the challenges faced by the

teachers in implementing story dictation. To overcome one of the challenges, doodle book is employed as a

modification from the original form of the story dictation.

1 INTRODUCTION

The study is motivated by the importance of critical

thinking as one of the skills needed in the 21

century to establish a society with adequate ability

of communication, ICT, citizenship and

collaboration (Trilling and Fadel, 2009).

Furthermore, Wray (2013) states that critical literacy

is one of the most important skills for the 21

society. It is believed that the skills can be

developed since the early years (Roche, 2015). In

the context of early childhood education, story is one

of the most suitable media for children (Damayanti,

2007; Brewster, Ellis and Girard, 2002; Isbell,

Sobol, Lindauer and Lowrance, 2004; Collins, 1999)

to develop their critical literacy (Roche, 2015).

Through story, children have the opportunity to

relate the context in the story with their own real life

(Ananthia, 2010; Kuyvenhoven, 2009). The

children’s critical literacy skill can be developed

through many ways; one of them is story dictation

(Gadzikowski, 2007).

Story dictation is happened when stories are

being invented by children. Therefore, children are

not only being a loyal consumer of a story, but they

can also be the ones who create their own stories

(Christ, Wang and Chiu, 2011; Vasquez, 2014). In

this activity, teacher is the one who will facilitate the

children to invent stories. However, the presentation

of story to children is still limited to only doing the

story-reading and storytelling, especially in

Indonesian schools. Even some teachers teaching

EFL in Indonesian context tend to not include story

in their teaching (Ananthia, 2010; Harun and

Ananthia, 2013).

This study involves three Early Childhood

Education Program (henceforth it is called

PGPAUD) student teachers as future teachers on

how they apply story dictation in kindergarten

classes. It attempts to identify the story dictation in

Indonesian kindergarten from the teachers’

perspective as their experiential learning. The study

also tries to reveal challenges faced by the teachers

in implementing story dictation with young learners.

Ananthia, W., Harun, C., Muliasari, D. and Silawati, E.

Experiential Learning of Future Teachers in Story Dictation for Early Childhood Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0007167903930398

In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference

on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 393-398

ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2

393

2 STORY IN THE EDUCATIONAL

CONTEXT

The employment of story in educational context has

been conducted across curriculum, such as

mathematic (Casey, Kersh, and Young, 2004),

science (Monhardt and Monhardt, 2006; Pringle and

Lamme, 2005; Sackes, Trundle, and Flevares, 2009),

and history (Smith, Noonan, and Guillain, 2016).

The using of story is also popular in the context of

developing children’s language skills and has

received big attention (for example Paquette, 2007;

Isbel, et al., 2004; and Brewster, et al., 2002).

The attempt in developing children’s linguistic

skills is usually in relevance with the need to

develop their literacy skills. Numerous research have

been conducted about developing children’s literacy

and critical thinking through stories (such as Roche,

2015; Stribling, 2014; Vasquez, 2014). Literacy and

critical thinking refers to problem solving ability

(Stribling, 2014; Wray, 2013) which recommend the

learners to have the ability to create something

(Wray, 2013). It makes creativity as one of the

indispensable skills in developing critical literacy.

This study attempts to identify how teachers can

develop children’s creativity in inventing story

through story dictation.

3 STORY DICTATION IN

KINDERGARTEN

CLASSROOM

In the implementation of story dictation, teachers

play an important role in developing children’s

creativity in making story. It means that the teachers

should be able to expose story environment in the

classroom so that the students could later on invent

their own stories. However, not many teachers are

used to the employment of story in the classroom,

especially in Indonesian context (Ananthia, 2010;

Harun and Ananthia, 2013). Teachers mostly do not

have enough self-confident in implementing story in

their classroom that makes them to have storytelling

in-service training (Groce, 2004).

Furthermore, previous research on the story

application in preschool were limited to only how

teachers present the story to the children through

storytelling and story-reading (such as Groce, 2004;

Ananthia, 2010; Harun and Ananthia, 2013;

Yuliariatiningsih, Ananthia and Yanthi, 2013).

Studies conducted by Christ, Wang and Chiu

(2011) and St. James Lutheran (2017) are among

few researches on how teacher could create

opportunity for children to invent their own story

through story dictation. Moreover, this kind of

study in Indonesian preschool context has not been

adequately examined yet. Story dictation offers the

opportunity for young children to create their own

story as soon as they are able to speak in sentences

despite their limited reading and writing skills

(Gadzikowski, 2007).

4 RESEARCH METHOD

The paper is written as a part of a bigger on-going

research on the implementation of story dictation in

Indonesian kindergarten. Qualitative research design

was employed in the study. It involved three student

teachers as the research participants. In selecting the

participants, the researchers published an open

recruitment to the PGPAUD student teachers. The

student teachers who applied to be involved in this

study were then selected based on their skills in

doing storytelling using Bahasa Indonesia, Basa

Sunda and English. From the selection process, three

student teachers with adequate Bahasa Indonesia,

Basa Sunda, and English storytelling skills were

recruited as the participants of the study. The

participants were asked to apply the story-dictation

in the teaching and learning process in the

kindergarten context. The story-dictation process

was conducted after the student-teacher participants

had delivered the storytelling as an exposure

activity. In the process of story-dictation, each of the

participants were sitting one-on-one with a child,

ready with a pen and a doodle page, to write every

word dictate by the child, until all of the children got

their turn. Therefore, the term story-dictation in this

context is not about the children writing what the

teacher dictate to them, but more like the children

dictate a story created by themselves to be written by

the teachers. Observations, field notes, reflective

notes and in-depth interview were employed as the

data collection methods. The data were then

qualitatively analysed by given coding until the

themes and key concepts were identified.

5 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

Having analysed the data collected in this study, two

themes emerged in the employment of story

dictation in Indonesian kindergarten, namely, the

preparation stage and the implementation stage. The

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

394

preparation stage refers to the situation before class,

while the implementation stage refers to the process

of the story dictation in the class.

5.1 Preparing the Story Dictation

In the preparation stage, four steps were identified.

The steps are designing a lesson plan, developing

learning media, selecting story for exposure activity,

and designing doodle book. The three teachers did

not find any difficulties in designing lesson plan,

since they were used to design lesson plans as parts

of university course. As the student teachers in

PGPAUD, almost all courses in the university

require them to master how to make a lesson plan.

Therefore, as it was confirmed from the in-depth

interview, all of the future teachers as the

participants of the study conveyed that the step of

designing the lesson plan could be handled easily.

However, the next three steps were considered as

quite challenging.

In the step of developing learning media, the

teachers were asked to deliver a story as an exposure

for children before the story dictation activity. The

teachers had difficulties in selecting suitable stories

to be presented in accordance with their context.

Unlike in the more developed English speaking

countries (such as USA or Australia), the discussion

about children literature in Indonesia is not well-

researched yet.

There are myriad researches discussing about

children stories based on numerous classifications in

the context of Western (USA and Australia)

children’s literature. For example, the themes about

gender roles (Peterson and Lach, 1990; Anderson

and Hamilton, 2005; Hamilton, Anderson, Broaddus

and Young, 2006), character building and good habit

(Cooper, 2007; Zeece, 2009; Almerico, 2014),

science learning (Pringle and Lamme, 2005;

Monhardt and Monhardt, 2006; Sackes, Trundle and

Flevares, 2009), mathematics learning (Casey, Kersh

and Young, 2004) and language skills (Isbell, Sobol,

Lindauer and Lowrance, 2004; Paquette, 2007).

Those researches could be used as a reference for the

teacher in selecting appropriate story books

relevance to their children’s conditions, in term of

cultural and ability. Besides those themes, the

discussion of abstract concept and what books to

choose is also available, such as the concept of

cross-cultural understanding (Al-Jafar and Buzzelli,

2004; Ghosn, 204) and how to develop children’s

imaginative skills (Hislam, 1995). Therefore, when

particular teachers need a particular book to develop

their students’ skill and ability, they just can easily

refer to those research to choose the right children’s

story book.

However, different situation was found in

Indonesian context. There is not yet a

comprehensive research about childrens’ literature in

Indonesian context. Besides schools in Indonesia are

mostly considerer as under resourced regarding the

children’s literature collection (Damayanti, 2007),

they are still few research in classifying the

Indonesian children’s story books. Thus, more often

than not, the teachers in Indonesia also used the

Western references in selecting the right story for

their students in Indonesian context. After they

found the right stories, they still had to adapt them to

make them relevance with their students’

characteristics. Hence, they arranged the story to be

presented in the form of their-handmade-storybook

as the learning media.

The last step of this stage was designing a doodle

pages. According to Gadzikowski (2007), teacher

only needs a piece of blank paper and a pen or pencil

in doing the process of story dictation. However the

student teachers as the participants of this study

were aware that the children would face difficulties

in creating their own stories if they began out of

nowhere. Therefore the student teachers decided to

consider the story dictation as a continuation activity

from the storytelling to the story creation by the

children. This modification was conducted in our

context to make it easier for children to invent their

story since this activity is a novel one for them.

Besides, there is no wrong way to do the story

dictation (Gadzikowski, 2007, p. 3), which makes us

possible to have any changes to fit into our

condition. Based on the in-depth interview, it was

revealed that the participants did not face any

significant difficulties. The challenge in this step

was more to the technical problem of making the

doodle page layout so that the students understood

how it worked to stimulate their ideas in creating the

story.

After all of the steps in the preparation stage

were conducted, the teachers were asked to do a

simulation, to practise their storytelling skill. Two of

the teachers said that it was the most challenging one

for them since they are not used to doing

storytelling. This simulation is important since

teachers are expected to be a storytelling role model

for the children (Gadzikowski, 2007, p. 13). In This

step, the participants were asked to conduct a mini

simulation in front of the researchers and the other

fellow participants. Afterwards, feedbacks of the

mini simulation were given to the participants from

the researchers. From this step, the participants

Experiential Learning of Future Teachers in Story Dictation for Early Childhood Education

395

difficulties in implementing storytelling were

identified. Most of them still have lack of self

confident in doing storytelling which affect to their

whole performances, such as intonation, clarity,

fluency, gesture and facial expression, speed and

the volume of the voice.

5.2 Implementing the Story Dictation

The second big theme that emerged in the story

dictation activity is the implementation stage. Six

steps were identified in the implementation of story

dictation, there are: storytelling, introducing doodle

pages, planning story extension, working on the

story dictation, revising the story, and publishing the

story.

The first step of the stage was storytelling. The

teachers were doing the storytelling based on the

selected story prepared beforehand. The theme of

the stories was friendship that was presented in the

form of fable stories. The teachers confessed that

they were quite nervous doing this in the first week.

Moreover, it was the first time the children were

with the participants (data from the field notes).

Hence, the participants not only faced the challenges

in implementing the storytelling techniques, but also

keeping the classroom management. However, they

started to enjoy this activity in the remaining weeks.

The next step was introducing doodle pages.

Doodle pages, derived from doodle book, are set of

unfinished pictures that should be completed.

Doodle pages were included in this study as a part of

modification toward the story dictation to make it fit

with the situation. Although it is said that in story

dictation children could start their own story from

nowhere (Gadzikowski, 2007), but it was difficult

when the activity has not become a routine yet.

Therefore, doodle pages were employed since it

could give context and stimulate children’s

imagination, fluency and originality of thinking

(Dziedziewics, Oledzka and Karwowski, 2013). In

this study children were asked to complete the

doodle pages. They were given some choices on

how they wished to complete their doodle pages.

Some of the were given small pieces of pictures to

be sticked on their doodle pages, and the rest of

them decided to draw their own pictures on the

pages. After that they were asked to create their own

story based on the completed doodle pages.

The third step was planning the story extension.

In this step children were given some time to think

and plan the story extension based on the teachers’

storytelling and their doodle pages. In the first week,

this step was the most challenging for the children.

They mostly did not understand what to do.

However in the second and third week, they were

used to this activity.

After planning the story, the next step was the

heart of the activity, which was the story dictation

itself. Teachers were working with children, having

one on one interaction. In this step, when a teacher

was working the story dictation with one child, the

other children had to wait their turn. Therefore

teachers had to be ready with another activity for

children while they waited for their turn. The most

challenging thing from this step was when children

were reluctant to speak telling their story. When it

happened teacher could give stimulus by asking

several question, such as, “how does your story

begin?” (Gadzikowski, 2007, p. 42).

Having the story ready from the story dictation,

the next step was revising the story. In this step all

the doodle pages were gathered. Therefore everyone

in the class gave the contribution to the book making

from their individual doodle pages. The sequences

of the pages were negotiated. After that the teacher

and children check the pages and discuss whether or

not they want to revise the story. The last thing from

this step was giving title to the children work. Two

of the teachers stated that this step was one the most

challenging steps. Most of the children did not

understand the concept of a title for a written work

(book).

The last step of the implementation stage was

publishing the story made by the children through

the story dictation. In this step the teachers compiled

the children’s doodle pages into a form of a book

and read the story to them. This step was the most

wonderful one since everyone in the class were

happy and proud of themselves that they could

create a storybook.

6 CONCLUSIONS AND

RECOMMENDATIONS

The study has identified the employment of story

dictation in Indonesian kindergarten from the

teachers’ perspective. The process of implementing

story dictation is subject to the context and situation.

Therefore different context could apply different

stages and steps.

The teachers’ experiential learning has also

revealed that employing story in the classroom is

still a big challenge for the teachers. Therefore,

teachers’ pre-service and in-service training on

CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology

Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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presenting story, doing storytelling and story

dictation is recommended.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study was funded by UTU UPI in the

programme of Hibah Penelitian Pengembangan dan

Pembinaan Kelompok Bidang Keahlian (HPPKBK)

PGPAUD LPPM UPI year 2017. We are grateful to

the student teachers of PGPAUD UPI Kampus

Cibiru who became the model teachers, and also to

the students of Insan Unggul kindergarten who were

involved in the study.

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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education

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