The effectiveness of students’ retellings of and responses to digital stories as a post-viewing activity on their reading attitudes and narrative comprehension

This experimental study investigates the effects of retelling, reading response, and combined retelling and reading response activities that second-grade students participated in after watching digital stories on their reading attitudes and narrative comprehension levels. In this pre-test–post-test control group design, 140 students, composed of 35 students in each group, participated in the study in three different experimental groups (retelling, response, and retelling–response) and a control group. The digital stories created by pre-service teachers were used in the written and oral retelling and response activities, in which second graders participated in small groups of seven and watched the digital stories on large smart screens. The experimental period, including the pre-test and post-test, lasted nine weeks. The students watched nine digital stories. In the pre-and post-tests, the students’ total, recreational, and academic reading attitudes and narrative comprehension levels were assessed. The results showed that the narrative comprehension scores of all experimental groups increased significantly compared with those of the control group. In addition, when the pre-and post-test total reading attitude scores and narrative comprehension scores of the experimental groups and the control group were compared, statistically significant increases in the scores of all experimental groups demonstrated the effectiveness of the interventions. This study contributes to the literature by showing that digital stories created by pre-service teachers improved second-grade students’ reading attitudes and narrative comprehension levels when used in the retelling, response, and retelling–response groups.