Outside-in Domain

Narrative and story structure

Children who have listened to adults tell stories, have been read pictures books, and have overheard and participated in oral descriptions of events come to understand the general script for that type of language use. In a typical picture book story, for example, characters are introduced, e.g., a bus, a bus driver, and children. Next some goal or motive is set up, e.g., the children are going to school. Next, something happens to the characters, e.g., the bus breaks down. Finally, there is a resolution to the problem, e.g., the children help the driver fix the bus and everyone gets to school on time. Children learn these scripts, sometimes called story grammars, and it helps them remember a story the next time they hear one or read one.

Conceptual and semantic knowledge

Children who know something about the world are much better able to understand what they read once they get to the age of formal instruction in reading. Development of language, vocabulary, conceptual knowledge, and domain knowledge is a life-long process. It begins early in life and needs to continue throughout the preschool period, and beyond. By first grade, linguistically advantaged children are likely to have vocabularies that are four times the size of their linguistically disadvantaged peers. These differences widen over the elementary school years, and result in children who have great difficulty in understanding what they are reading, who cannot write well-formed coherent compositions, and who have trouble in oral expression. How is a second grader who defines the word "shock" as a "big fish" or "jail" as "that stuff you put in your hair" going to make sense of written stories that include these words?