INTEGRATION OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND CHARACTER VALUES IN EARLY-GRADE CHILDREN'S STORYBOOKS
This study looks at how language learning and character values come together in the children's storybooks that early-grade elementary students read. We took a qualitative descriptive approach, running a content analysis on 25 storybooks and backing it up with classroom observation and interviews with teachers and students, in order to pin down the character values that dominate these texts and the strategies teachers use to weave them into the four language skills. Five character values stood out as dominant — responsibility, honesty, cooperation, environmental care, and independence — alongside a three-phase integration model: pre-reading (listening, moral feeling), during-reading (reading, moral knowing), and post-reading (speaking and writing, moral action). Writing and speaking activities such as reflective journals and role-playing turned out to be central in turning moral understanding into a personal commitment. These findings feed into the development of character-based language teaching materials and support the implementation of the Merdeka Curriculum in early-grade classrooms.
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