Background & objectives: Selection of appropriate educational strategy in the field of oral health is considered as an important issue in prevention of oral and dental diseases and as oral health promotion in community. Importance of this made us to compare two methods of storytelling (indirect method) and lecturing (direct method) in oral health education of elementary school students in Yazd.

Methods: This intervention study was conducted on 117 female elementary school students in 2012-2013. Random and clustered sampling was done from 4 groups of grade 3 in elementary school. Data selection was through a questionnaire, so that knowledge, attitude and practice of students were evaluated and compared before and after administration of methods. Data were analyzed using SPSS-17 software through T-test and ANOVA.

Results: The mean knowledge scores were 15.59+1.94 and 16.96+0.79 in instructed group by lecturing and storytelling respectively and the difference between two groups were statistically significant (p=0.001). The mean attitude scores were 21.40+3.5 and 24.32+2.55 in instructed group by lecturing and storytelling respectively and the difference between two groups were statistically significant (p=0.001). The mean practice scores were 13.42+2.01  and 14.39+1 in instructed group by lecturing and storytelling respectively and the difference between two groups were statistically significant (p= 0.003).

Conclusion: Findings of this study indicated that storytelling method (indirect method) had more significant effect than lecturing method (direct method) on knowledge, attitude and practice in oral health education.