<![CDATA[Speaking is the language skill through which primary learners make their thinking audible, yet many Indonesian classrooms still allocate little room for sustained oral practice. This study describes how the storytelling method was implemented to develop the speaking skills of fifth-grade students at SD Negeri 41/II Laman Panjang. A descriptive qualitative design was employed with sixteen students and their class teacher as participants. Data were generated through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and documentation, and were analysed using the interactive model of Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña, comprising data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing. Credibility was established through source and technique triangulation together with member checking. The analysis produced five themes: emerging speaking confidence, increasing oral fluency, an expanding lexical repertoire, improved delivery and expression, and a learner-centred classroom climate. Students who initially declined to speak began volunteering to present, relied less on the written text, reused story vocabulary in their own retelling, and sequenced events more coherently. These changes were mediated by a scaffolding sequence in which teacher modelling gave way to guided practice and then to independent retelling. The study contributes a classroom-level account of how graduated support, rather than storytelling as such, appears to drive oral development, and it identifies lesson time and heterogeneous entry ability as the principal constraints on implementation.]]>
