Utilizing Classical Literature in Kindergarten Classrooms: A Tool for Developing Social Emotional Skills and Reading Comprehension

This capstone project seeks to answer the question, How can educators use pedagogical storytelling with classical literature to address the social-emotional needs of their students while also increasing reading comprehension in early years? For the purposes of this research, classical literature is defined mainly as fables, folk stories and fairy tales. In answering my research question, I explore the research that underpins the history of pedagogical storytelling, classical literature, best practices in reading comprehension and academic language instruction, and the foundations of social emotional learning. This Capstone Project includes a two week, ten lesson literature unit that weaves together these themes by using classroom read alouds to explicitly teach story structure and emotional awareness. The curriculum focuses on utilizing specific reading comprehension strategies, mainly, Read, Stop, Think, Ask, Connect (RSTAC), to help students engage with literature to deepen their understanding of texts and build connections to their own lives (McKee & Car, 2016). This curriculum was designed utilizing the principles of understanding by design (Wiggins & McTighe, 2011).While this project is tailored to a classical kindergarten classroom and intended to be implemented at the beginning of the school year, the overall lessons learned indicate that it would be beneficial in many classroom settings and can be easily expanded on throughout the school year