Interactive Reading Justice, et al. (2008)

Interactive Reading

Chapter 11 Strategic and Intentional shared Storybook reading Achieving Excellence in Preschool Literacy Instruction Justice, Laura M. and Vukelich, Carol (2008) New York: Guilford Press (198-218)

Print Salient books are storybooks in which print is a notable design characteristic. They integrate print into illustrations with labels, environmental print, and visible speech sounds (Smolkin, Conlon, & Yaden, 1988)

Print references comprise any verbal or nonverbal reference to print that adults make when they share books.

Adult references to print typically are in these areas: concepts of print, letters, words, print-to-speech connections.

Example from a Head Start classroom:

T: Today we’ll read one of my favorite books, There’s a dragon at my school. Here is where it says the title (runs finger along the title)

C: That’s the title?

T: Yes, the title is the name of the book. This one has a lot of words in it. One, two, three, four, five, six! They are written with red letters

C: S T A etc.

T: That’s a lot of letters. I hear someone say S (points to s)) and I heard T (points to T). You have sharp eyes today. Let’s think about what this book might be about. It’s called there’s a Dragon iat my school. I think it might be about a mouse in a house

C: No it’s about a dragon at school.

Print salient storybooks:

Chicka chicka boom boom (Martin Jr. and Archambault, 1989)

Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that type (Cronin, 2000)

Growing vegetable soup (Ehlert 1987)

My little brother Debi Gliori, 1992)

Silver seeds (Paolilli and Brewer 2001)

The crunching munching caterpillar

The gigantic turnip (Tolstoy & Sharkey, 1998)

The runaway orange (F Brooks 1999)

There’s a dragon at my school (Tyler & Hawthorn, 96)

Phonologically salient books

There’s a dragon at my school and he’s broken every rule

Mrs PiggleWiggle; Tessa the teacher; Gerda the goose; Tooth Trouble; Olive the other reindeer; ChickaChicka boom boom

Make phonological features an explicit aspect of the reading session.

Sample teacher talk:

T: This book is called Tooth Trouble. That’s interesting. Each word in the title starts with /t/ Listen for it. I’ll read the title again TTTTooth TTTTrouble. It looks like the walrus has a toothache.

When adults reference the phonological features of language they bring attention to words, syllables, onsets, and rimes.

“Though many early childhood curricula organize phonological awareness instruction to follow a developmental sequence, doing so does not appear to be necessary given that preschool-age children show sensitivities to all of these aspects of phonology, indicating that phonological awareness development does not follow a strict linear developmental continuum (Anthony, Lonigan, Driscoll, Phillips, Burgess, 2003)

Developing print knowledge and phoneme awareness can be integrated into storybook reading.

Justice & Ezell, 2004

Phonological Awareness includes words, syllables, intrasyllable units of onset and rime, and phonemes. Print knowledge, alphabet and PA represent important elements of emergent literacy development that pave the way for unlocking the alphabetic principle.

Point to print,

Track print

Comment on print,

Ask questions about print to make it an object of salience

References to print occur at very low rates if at all (Ezell & Justice, 2000; Phillips & McNaughton, 1990; van Kleeck, GILLAM, Hamilton, & McGrath, 1997)

Including an expliit focus on print in reading interactions with children can significantly accelerate their print knowledge (Justice & Ezell, 2002)

Types of questions to build comprehension

Predictions

Discussion of vocabulary and story events by linking to something the child knows

Why and how questions stimulate inferential thinking

Why do you think they wanted to do that?

How do you think baby bear feels about that?

Why did Goldilocks go into the house?