A six-stage story structure approach for elementary students’ story production: quality, interest, and attitude

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of a six-stage story structure (4S) approach on elementary students’ story production. To this end, the 4S approach was developed and realized in the form of paper-based and digital storybooks based on scaffolding theory. Specifically, the students learned the six-stage story structure (i.e. setting, theme, attempt, consequence, climax, and resolution) from a number of stories in the dual tasks (i.e. the use of digital storybook after the use of paper-based storybook) and then applied this structure to create their own stories. To address the influence of the 4S approach, forty-nine fifth-grade students participated in a quasi-experimental study for seven 40-minute sessions over 2 weeks. The students in the Experimental Group using the 4S approach were compared with those in the Control Group without the 4S approach. The findings revealed that the 4S approach helps students’ story quality, interests, and attitudes. Some implications and limitations are also discussed in this paper.