The Impact of Story: One Preschool Program’s Experiences Using Story Cubes as a Culturally Relevant Oral Language Strategy.

Storytelling is a universal practice prevalent in many cultures. Research on language development indicates that storytelling strategies can be beneficial for supporting oral language development in young children (Kennedy, 2016). Story cubes, used as reflective, culturally relevant instructional strategies, can be highly motivating because they encourage children’s personal, relevant contributions while addressing the language needs of Dual Language Learners. When acquiring a second language, these students face unique challenges in overall acquisition of literacy skills (Amodei & Strong, 2019). This article describes a study conducted at a trilingual preschool. Four preschool teachers and 60 PreK students ages 3-5 years participated in the study designed to explore the use of story cubes in their classrooms as a culturally responsive and reflective strategy. Accomplished through small and large group engagement with story cubes, researchers collected qualitative and quantitative data using observational field notes, Likert scale questionnaire responses and narrative interview transcript responses.