Chapter 9. Facilitating children’s elicitation of interlaced narratives in classroom interactions

This chapter is based on the analysis of interactions that were video-recorded during 66 meetings in 24 (years 4 to 7) classrooms in five Italian schools. These meetings are part of a project aiming to collect personal photos regarding children’s memories and to use them to facilitate the production of narratives around children’s memories in classroom interactions. This chapter focuses on the facilitation of interlaced narratives, i.e. new narratives elicited through children’s responses to an initial narrative. The analysis concerns the ways in which facilitative actions enhance (or do not enhance) interlaced narratives, and the interactional structures that allow (or do not allow) children to elicit new narratives, that is, to move from a child’s initial narrative to other children’s narratives.