Reading Theories 1
Journey to Reading Theories
Deborah Dilbeck
In my first year as a teacher, I knew very little about reading theories based on sound research. I had not thought about reluctant readers. I began as an eighth grade teacher believing that my students knew how to read and read well. I was excited about exploring novels with them like To Kill a Mockingbird. I imagined myself reading with students and assigning chapters to read at home. The next day I would assign essay questions that they would labor over anticipating my insightful comments. Next, we would probe the text together extracting every ounce of plot, character development, figurative language, and theme. My fantasies died on the first day.
Struggling middle school readers were an enigma to me, an avid, independent reader. The needs of my students challenged me to learn how to help them become autonomous readers. Reading theories facilitate my understanding of how readers grow toward independence.
Middle grades students need to read with Automaticity—the ability to decode words, recognize word meanings, the meaning of sentences, and the meaning of the text (LaBerg & Samuels 1974). Struggling readers resist reading; therefore, they lack the reading practice necessary to read automatically—to read fluently. Jonathan, a reluctant reader, used all kinds of strategies to avoid reading. Jonathan ranted to me one day after I had asked him to get on task for the third time, “Reading is not important! It won’t get you any where!” Later when we entered the cafeteria, I took Jonathan to our new principal, a man that I know Jonathan respects. Mr. Keith Colbert explained to him the importance of reading. He told Jonathan, “You’re wrong Jonathan. Reading is important. Reading can take you to places that you have never visited. Reading can stretch your world.” Soon there was a change in Jonathan. He loves Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I caught him reading it during his literature circle time when he should have been reading Holes. Soon, I observed him reading both novels at the appropriate times. Jonathan told me for the first time ever, he has finished a chapter book, not just one book but two! My persistence backed up by my principal forced Jonathan to practice his reading. His
Reading Theories 2
reading has automaticity through continued practice. Practice made him feel successful. Now Jonathan loves reading.
Viewing reading as a cognitive process assisted my development as a reading teacher. Besieged, dependent readers often lack the schema necessary to make connections before reading, while reading, and after reading. Schema is like the filing cabinet of the mind. Within the schemata filing cabinet, there are files. The number of files and the thickness of the files depend upon the knowledge or experiences of the reader. Enriching schemata requires the student to add files, contribute information to these files, and to contribute information to existing files. Schema must be built and activated throughout the reading process.
Building background before reading is crucial. When reading Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, it is important for students to understand the pre-Civil Rights Movement. Interviews or guest speakers with similar experiences to Cassie Logan’s add so much to the reading. Continuous schemata development is necessary throughout the reading. Field trips and relevant movies add to prior knowledge and lay the ground work for future novels like To Kill a Mockingbird. Schemata help students to relate new information to prior knowledge; to determine the importance of information in the reading; to make inferences, and to remember information (Anderson & Pearson 1984).
Students build schemata based upon psychological and social experiences known as constructivism. Students relate to the same text in different ways. Discussions in groups; literature circles; and writings allow adolescents to share their unique perspectives of the text (Calfee & Patrick, 1995). Posting student work in the classroom and hallway boasts the accomplishments of my students’ constructive analysis of their texts: Marcus pauses with his friends outside my door to show off the rap that he created from T.J.’s perspective, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. Ebony stops to explain the village burrowed into the hillside from The Hobbit that she created. Both students previously dependent readers transformed into social, independent readers.
Similar to constructivism, sociocultural theory explains that students extract meaning from text based on their cultural and social backgrounds (Vygotsky 1978). Reading is best practiced socially. Reading a variety of texts that celebrate a variety of cultures provides for social and cultural understanding. The population at my middle
Reading Theories 3
school is very diverse. Culturally diverse students need materials that reflect and celebrate their culture. They need opportunities to share their perspectives.
My classroom library, a hodgepodge of classics and adolescent novels including authors Walter Dean Myers, Gary Soto, and Amy Tan, reflects the diversity in my classroom. Students choose books for independent reading from my classroom library as well as the school’s media center. The interactive model of reading explains that the reader files or adds new information to existing schemata including the knowledge of words, existing knowledge, and syntactic knowledge (Rumelhart, 1976). A diverse collection of reading materials and activities promotes the interaction of background and texts. However, my classroom library lacks the texts needed for literature circles.
To obtain novel sets that appeal to my diverse population, I choose students to scour the novel storage room for texts that interest them for literature circles. The selection committee brings copies of the novels to the classroom. Then the students examine the novels individually. Next they write letters to me explaining what they want to read and why. I place students into groups based on their reading choices. Each student in the literature circle produces a weekly product based on their texts.
Good readers make connections to their reading by keying into associations, feelings, attitudes, and ideas providing the deepest interaction between reader and text. This—I learned—is Reader Response Theory (Rosenblatt, L. M., 1978). Making meaningful connections to The Diary of Anne Frank is difficult for many of my students. While planning literature circle texts that would relate to The Holocaust and Anne Frank, a student, Kwame, asked, “Have you seen The Freedom Writers Diary?” I not only saw the movie, but I bought the book as well. When Erin Gruwell compares Hitler’s Nazis conquest of countries to gangs’ conquest of neighborhoods, I knew that I had the hook that I needed. I planned an entirely new unit calling it Fostering Tolerance. I purchased a few of the selections that Gruwell chose for her students: Durango Street, Zlata’s Diary, and The Wave. I bought Night and I Never Saw Another Butterfly as well. From the novel storage room, my selection committee chose The Diary of Anne Frank and Waiting for the Rain, a novel set in apartheid South Africa. The novel sets were used for literature circles. We read Goodrich and Hackett’s drama The Diary of Anne Frank during our
Reading Theories 4
work period as a class. The unit culminated with students completing a historical fiction piece with an adolescent protagonist caught up in The Holocaust.
Ultimately, readers utilize metacognition while reading. They analyze their cognitive processes and employ the necessary strategies that enable them to find meaning in text. Helping a student to this cognitive level is my ultimate goal. Modeling reading for my students helps them see the strategies that I employ while reading. Several times a week, I read aloud to my students stopping to use context clues; to define unfamiliar words; to make connections; to make inferences; to analyze figurative language, and to use fix up strategies. After reading, we discuss the text. Next, they continue reading in-groups or independently using the strategies that I modeled. The goal is to make metacognition automatic for my students. With practice on the part of my students, and careful monitoring on my part, my struggling readers will grow exponentially in their reading abilities. Students that read well feel successful in any academic setting.
Reading theories changed my view of reading instruction. Now I understand that reading is a cognitive process. As a reading teacher it is up to me to provide the research based instruction that my students need in order to comprehend and enjoy reading. For struggling readers, it is my responsibility to encourage them and require them to practice until they read with automaticity. Students need the necessary schema in order to comprehend what they read. I understand that my students construct meaning based upon social and psychological experiences. Now I provide the necessary social interaction for my students through literature circles, shared reading responses, and by posting student work in the classroom and hallway. Because my students are a diverse population, it is my responsibility to supply them with texts that reflect and celebrate their cultural backgrounds. It is my responsibility to allow my diverse students opportunities to share their ideas with each other because reading is a social activity and students need to share their unique perspectives. My ultimate goal is that my students read with metacognition—analyzing their thinking as they read in order to find meaning.
Reading Theories 5
References
Anderson, R.C., & Pearson, P.D. (1984). A schema theoretic view of basic processes in
reading. In P.D. Peason (Ed.), Handbook of reading research (pp.255-291).
White Plans, NY: Longman.
Calfee, R.C., & Patrick, C.L. (1995). Teach our children well. Stanford, CA: Stanford
Alumni Association.
LaBerg, D, & Samuels, S.J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing
in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293-323.
Rosenblatt, L., (1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the
literary work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press.
Rumelhart, D., (1977). Toward an interactive model of reading. In S. Dornic (Ed.).
Attention and performance (vol. 6, pp. 573-603). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Vgotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological
processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Archive for the ‘reading theory’ Category
Making Friends With Word Families
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
It’s a term that’s got a nice, friendly ring to it. Perhaps you’ve heard it before but may not know exactly what it means: word families.
Word families, sometimes also referred to as phonograms are letter patterns that are more consistent than individual vowel sounds. They stick together and form words that rhyme with each other. For instance, Mat, cat, fat, sat and bat are all part of the -at word family. Net, bet, wet, set and get are part of the –et word family. If your early reader is able to identify the pattern, it becomes easier to sound out related words that are part of the same word family.
Here are some other common word families:
at: bat, mat, rat, hat
ack: sack, back, Jack, Zack
am: Sam, Pam, ram
ail: bail, sail, pail
et: bet, pet, wet set, get
en: Ben, hen, men, pen, ten
it: bit, hit, sit, fit
ill: Bill, fill, hill, will
op: flop, mop, cop, hop, stop, top, pop, plop
ot: hot, rot, dot, got, not, pot
uck: muck, yuck, luck
ug: hug, rug, bug, mug, tug
Bob Books Set 3: Word Families uses many word families that are easy for children to recognize and sound out (“Polly was a jolly bird. ‘Hello, Polly,’ said Dolly”) including various combinations (“Mop was a floppy dog. Mop was Tom’s pal”) which will help make longer stories more manageable for your emerging reader.
Once your child gets the hang of various patterns, both visually and audibly, spelling and writing skills will be enhanced as well. You can make it a game: “What are all the words you can think of that end in –ack? How about –ug? Or –og?”
If you are interested in obtaining a comprehensive list of word families and rhymes this word list is a great resource as well.
Tags: phonograms, rhymes, rimes, word families
Posted in reading theory | No Comments »
How do Bob Books work?
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
As you are most likely aware, there are a few, important steps and early literacy foundation skills that are necessary for reading. First, your child needs to know the alphabet and the sounds associated with each letter of the alphabet. And then, the ability to hear and identify different sounds in spoken words (otherwise known as phonemic awareness. If this sounds too technical, it doesn’t need to. Bob Books are exceedingly simple! Once you’ve established that your child is ready for reading you will likely discover that the learning to read process becomes an organic, enjoyable and confidence-building experience for you and your child. This is the magic of Bob Books.
Bob Books work sequentially:
My First Bob Books build important pre-reading skills mentioned above like the alphabet and sequencing. My First Bob Books: Alphabet tunes your child’s ear to the sounds letters make and My First Bob Books: Pre-Reading Skills introduces shapes and patterns to build awareness of letter shapes and groups.
Next in the progression are the Bob Books Foundation sets, designed for beginning readers. Each set builds upon the previous set, with enough repetition (so reading becomes comfortable and easy) and new material (so the child stays interested.) The stories contain silly and mischievous characters and simple plotlines that will make children giggle. The illustrations are intentionally simple and childlike. The books themselves are sized perfectly for little hands. Numbering the books and boxes creates a sense of progress and accomplishment for your child.
And now, a bit of info about each foundation set:
Bob Books Set 1: Beginning Readers contains just four letters in the first book so your child can easily sound out all the words (Mat, Sam, cat, sat etc.). New sounds and letters are added gradually, until all the letters of the alphabet are introduced (except Q).
Next, Bob Books Set 2: Advancing Readers uses three-letter words and consistent vowel sounds in slightly longer stories. Again, repetition is used throughout as a way to continue building confidence.
Consonant blends, endings, and a few sight words mix things up and advance reading skills in Bob Books Set 3: Word Families. The use of word families help make longer stories more manageable.
Once you’ve found that your child has mastered Sets 1-3, longer books and more complex words will continue to engage and challenge your young reader in Bob Books Set 4: Complex Words. New word blends, more sight words and longer words advance their skills, while sound repetition still keeps reading easy.
The final set in the series, Bob Books Set 5: Long Vowels introduces the important new skills of long vowels and the magical silent E. Reading vocabularies will grow quickly as your child begins to master the longer stories. Upon completion of Bob Books Set 5, your emerging reader is now ready to move onto chapter books!
What’s next after graduating from Bob Books Set 5? We’ll cover this in an upcoming blog. In the meantime, be sure to let us know your favorites and recommendations.
Tags: alphabet, Bob Books series, My First Bob Books, phonemic awareness, pre reading skills, Reading readiness
Posted in Reading foundation skills, Reading readiness, phonemic awareness, reading theory | No Comments »
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Making Friends With Word Families
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
It’s a term that’s got a nice, friendly ring to it. Perhaps you’ve heard it before but may not know exactly what it means: word families.
Word families, sometimes also referred to as phonograms are letter patterns that are more consistent than individual vowel sounds. They stick together and form words that rhyme with each other. For instance, Mat, cat, fat, sat and bat are all part of the -at word family. Net, bet, wet, set and get are part of the –et word family. If your early reader is able to identify the pattern, it becomes easier to sound out related words that are part of the same word family.
Here are some other common word families:
at: bat, mat, rat, hat
ack: sack, back, Jack, Zack
am: Sam, Pam, ram
ail: bail, sail, pail
et: bet, pet, wet set, get
en: Ben, hen, men, pen, ten
it: bit, hit, sit, fit
ill: Bill, fill, hill, will
op: flop, mop, cop, hop, stop, top, pop, plop
ot: hot, rot, dot, got, not, pot
uck: muck, yuck, luck
ug: hug, rug, bug, mug, tug
Bob Books Set 3: Word Families uses many word families that are easy for children to recognize and sound out (“Polly was a jolly bird. ‘Hello, Polly,’ said Dolly”) including various combinations (“Mop was a floppy dog. Mop was Tom’s pal”) which will help make longer stories more manageable for your emerging reader.
Once your child gets the hang of various patterns, both visually and audibly, spelling and writing skills will be enhanced as well. You can make it a game: “What are all the words you can think of that end in –ack? How about –ug? Or –og?”
If you are interested in obtaining a comprehensive list of word families and rhymes this word list is a great resource as well.
Tags: phonograms, rhymes, rimes, word families
Posted in reading theory | No Comments »
How do Bob Books work?
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
As you are most likely aware, there are a few, important steps and early literacy foundation skills that are necessary for reading. First, your child needs to know the alphabet and the sounds associated with each letter of the alphabet. And then, the ability to hear and identify different sounds in spoken words (otherwise known as phonemic awareness. If this sounds too technical, it doesn’t need to. Bob Books are exceedingly simple! Once you’ve established that your child is ready for reading you will likely discover that the learning to read process becomes an organic, enjoyable and confidence-building experience for you and your child. This is the magic of Bob Books.
Bob Books work sequentially:
My First Bob Books build important pre-reading skills mentioned above like the alphabet and sequencing. My First Bob Books: Alphabet tunes your child’s ear to the sounds letters make and My First Bob Books: Pre-Reading Skills introduces shapes and patterns to build awareness of letter shapes and groups.
Next in the progression are the Bob Books Foundation sets, designed for beginning readers. Each set builds upon the previous set, with enough repetition (so reading becomes comfortable and easy) and new material (so the child stays interested.) The stories contain silly and mischievous characters and simple plotlines that will make children giggle. The illustrations are intentionally simple and childlike. The books themselves are sized perfectly for little hands. Numbering the books and boxes creates a sense of progress and accomplishment for your child.
And now, a bit of info about each foundation set:
Bob Books Set 1: Beginning Readers contains just four letters in the first book so your child can easily sound out all the words (Mat, Sam, cat, sat etc.). New sounds and letters are added gradually, until all the letters of the alphabet are introduced (except Q).
Next, Bob Books Set 2: Advancing Readers uses three-letter words and consistent vowel sounds in slightly longer stories. Again, repetition is used throughout as a way to continue building confidence.
Consonant blends, endings, and a few sight words mix things up and advance reading skills in Bob Books Set 3: Word Families. The use of word families help make longer stories more manageable.
Once you’ve found that your child has mastered Sets 1-3, longer books and more complex words will continue to engage and challenge your young reader in Bob Books Set 4: Complex Words. New word blends, more sight words and longer words advance their skills, while sound repetition still keeps reading easy.
The final set in the series, Bob Books Set 5: Long Vowels introduces the important new skills of long vowels and the magical silent E. Reading vocabularies will grow quickly as your child begins to master the longer stories. Upon completion of Bob Books Set 5, your emerging reader is now ready to move onto chapter books!
What’s next after graduating from Bob Books Set 5? We’ll cover this in an upcoming blog. In the meantime, be sure to let us know your favorites and recommendations.
Tags: alphabet, Bob Books series, My First Bob Books, phonemic awareness, pre reading skills, Reading readiness
Posted in Reading foundation skills, Reading readiness, phonemic awareness, reading theory | No Comments »
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Overall, two trends were observed during storytelling:
* The story was told without interruptions; thus, adults tended to avoid asking questions, did not strike up conversations with the child, and, when there were questions, tended to give short answers and continued with the story. This pattern was observed particularly during narration.
* Children tended to be involved in the story, either impromptu—with questions, comments, or by adding up story segments—or by being challenged by adults—through questions, drawing children's attention to pictures, urging them to recall personal experiences or information, asking them to justify the characters' actions, etc.
In order to investigate the type of extratextual interactions occurring during storytelling, 88 stories were picked and analyzed in terms of the extratextual interactions involved.
Part II: Extratextual Interactions during Storytelling
Sample
In order to have as homogeneous a sample as possible, the stories that were analyzed were chosen according to the type of material (literary or general knowledge book) and the discourse type (fiction or poetry). Excluded were 11 informational stories, 2 stories in which no interaction took place, 5 stories in verse, and 6 picture books with very little text. Thus, the sample comprised 88 entertaining literary texts. Of these, 58 were folktales, 21 of which were narrated and 34 read; 3 were improvised stories, which were narrated; 6 were Aesop's tales, which were read; and 24 short stories, which were read.
Coding Extratextual Interaction
The extratextual interactions involved in the stories were coded on the basis of content and were examined separately for parents and children. The specific coding procedure was based on other research on storytelling that examined adult and children's extratextual interaction (Hammett, van Kleeck, & Huberty, 2003; Neuman, 1996; Yaden, Smolkin, & Conlon, 1989). The specific procedure involved the following extratextual interaction categories:
1. Attention. Extratextual interaction with a view to drawing children's attention (by calling the children's names: "Can you hear, Irene?" or by drawing their attention to illustrations: "Can you see the dog?")
2. Names. Extratextual interaction with a view to making children familiar with the names of objects, incidents, characters, and setting ("This is a lion.")
3. Asking about names. Questions about the names of objects, incidents, characters, etc., of the story ("What is she wearing on her head?" "Where is the lion caged?")
4. Feedback. Extratextual interaction that aims at praising, confirming, or correcting children's extratextual interaction ("Yes, Snow White was pretty." "No, he was not dropping pebbles; he was dropping crumbs.")
5. Repetition. Verbatim repetition of children's words or phrases (child: "a dog"; parent: "a dog")
6. Elaboration. Extratextual interaction through which a child's words or phrases are elaborated by adding extra information (child: "a bee"; parent: "a flying bee")
7. Organizing the activity. Extratextual interaction through which children are kept intrigued by the story ("I'm going ahead.")
8. Prediction. Questions asked to a child with a view to giving information about facts and incidents in the story that have not yet been told ("What did the animals do next?")
9. Relating the story to real life. Commentary and questions to children with a view to relating the plot of the story to everyday experiences and informing them about facts and objects in the story ("What color is your own toothbrush?" "We drive a car; they used to drive a cart."
10. Recalling information. Questions to children in order to make them recall incidents and details in the story.
11. Clarifying. Extratextual interaction with a view to motivating picture description, word explanation, and interpretation of characters' attitudes.
12. Asking for clarification. Questions that motivate children to describe or interpret the characters' attitudes in the story ("Why do you think they were happy?")
With regard to children's extratextual interaction, coding involved the following 9 of the 12 categories made by adults:
1. Names. Children name objects, incidents, characters ("a dog").
2. Questions about names. Children ask about names of objects, incidents, and characters ("What's this?").
3. Repetition. Children repeat the exact words or phrases that the narrator/reader had used.
4. Relating the story to real life. Children relate incidents in the story to their own personal experiences ("I'll take out the thorn for you." "I want a watch like this for me, too.").
5. Recalling information. Children point out details in the story and give information (Parent: "What does a matchmaker do?" Child: "She finds grooms.")
6. Prediction. Children predict the development of the plot ("Now the wolf is going to come in.").
7. Clarifying. Children describe pictures and explain attitudes ("Here is the little pig going to his little brother.").
8. Questions for clarification. Children ask for explanations about incidents and attitudes ("What is little John doing?" "How did he go?").
9. Parallel reading. The category involves only children's extratextual interaction and “reading”/“narrating” words or phrases in the story, while parents are reading/narrating (Parent: "and Little Red Riding Hood set off…" Child: "…to go to her grandmother's.").
With regard to the reliability of coding interventions, the authors first categorized the extratextual interactions of five stories. Then they discussed the categories with three colleagues who had read the stories; no different opinions were expressed. The statistical analysis of the extratextual interactions was performed with SPSS and involved descriptive statistics, frequency statistics, and mean comparisons (independent samples t-test). Minimum level of significance was p < 0.05.
Results
The comparison of children's and adults' extratextual interactions—separately for narration and story reading—demonstrated that, with regard to narration, adults' extratextual interactions were less frequent than those of children. With regard to story reading, the number of adults' extratextual interactions was greater than the number of children's extratextual interactions (Tables 2 & 3).
Mean comparison per extratextual interaction category among younger and older children demonstrated that children up to 3 years old made more extratextual comments than older children with regard to names (t = 2.032, p < 0.05). Older children made more extratextual comments than younger ones for the category questions for clarification (t = -3.198, p < 0.05), whereas adults made more extratextual comments when they read/narrated to older children for the category clarification (t = -2.385, p < 0.05).
Discussion
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In Western societies, narration and reading are two approaches through which young children with the help of adults become familiar with their heritage and learn their native language (Teale, 1984). Despite some similarities, the two approaches differ in significant ways:
* Material origin. Reading is based only on written texts, whereas narration exploits sources from both oral texts and anonymous writing.
* Memory. Although essential to the narrator, who must have a priori knowledge of the story, memory is insignificant for the reader.
* Visual contact with the audience. Although constant for the narrator, visual contact is limited for the reader because there is always a book between a reader and his or her audience.
* Story dramatization. For narrators, story dramatization is easier than for readers because narrators tell the story as a personal experience with their own judgment and interpretation, whereas readers are committed to the written text (Giannikopoulou, 1996).
In Greece, both approaches are employed for storytelling to preschool children. Narration is mostly used by adults at a lower educational level for folktales, perhaps because folklore is still vivid among people of a lower social status (Natsiopoulou, 2002). In contrast, reading stories is preferred by adults at a higher educational level, possibly because of their familiarity with children's books (Natsiopoulou, 2002), including folktales.
Both during narration and reading, there are verbal exchanges between adults and children, which in the present study were made exclusively about the content of the story. Extratextual interaction about writing styles (i.e., naming letters, highlighting words or sentences) was not observed. Adults' focus on the content of the story has been observed in other studies as well (Hammett, van Kleeck, & Huberty, 2003; Neuman, 1996; Morrow & Smith, 1990). In the present study, extratextual interaction about writing styles did not occur because the texts used did not invite that kind of extratextual interaction; it has often been noted that adults' extratextual interaction about writing is observed when they read alphabet books (Stadler & McEvoy, 2003; van Kleeck, 1998). van Kleeck (1998) maintains that when parents read to preschool children, first they emphasize the story, irrespective of its type (simple story, poetry, story with emphasis on the alphabet). They subsequently, in the case of storybooks, emphasize the plot; in the case of alphabet books, they make comments about the alphabet, morphemes at the beginning of words, etc. It is worth noting that alphabet books are common in Greece but were not chosen by participants in the present study. A possible explanation is that parents who had been asked to tell their children stories made their choice only among simple stories with pleasant plots and action in order to be able to motivate discussion about story content (Stadler & McEvoy, 2003).
The quantity and quality of verbal exchanges between adults and children during storytelling were affected by the approach employed (narration vs. reading) and the educational level of the adults. It was initially observed that reading stories resulted in more verbal exchanges between adults and children than narrating stories. The comparison of means indicated that during reading, adults' extratextual interaction was more frequent than during narration in terms of both high-level abstraction (i.e., relation of the story to real life, elaborated sentences) and low-level abstraction and concrete thought (i.e., inducing children to focus on pictures, names of objects, and incidents). In the present study, the narration approach was chosen principally by parents with less education. Torr (2004) found that parents who left school at an early age read stories quietly to children and interacted occasionally with them. In the present study, the small number of extratextual interactions during narration could be partly attributed to the adults’ storytelling technique.
Verbal interaction between adults and children appears to be frequent during reading when children's interaction is motivated by pictures in a storybook. Yaden, Smolkin, and Conlon (1989) maintained that 50%-60% of the questions asked by preschool children during storytelling at home involved characters and incidents in illustrations. In the present study, it was discovered that during reading, children's extratextual interaction was considerably more frequent than during narration with regard to the categories questions about names of objects and incidents and questions for clarification about pictures and attitudes. Thus, there was a greater number of adults' extratextual interactions during reading for the categories names (t = -4.56, p < 0.05) and clarification (t = -7.09, p < 0.05); there was a positive correlation between children's questions about names and adults' extratextual interaction for the category names (r = 0.736, p < 0.01) and children’s questions about clarification and adults extratextual interaction for the category clarification (r = 0.505, p < 0.01). The specific correlation between extratextual interaction categories that are considered to be low-level abstraction by researchers demonstrates that during reading, illustrations enhance verbal interaction between adults and children, principally in terms of the verbal exchanges requiring concrete thought.
The educational level of the narrator or reader was discovered to be related to adults' extratextual interaction, both in terms of high- and low-level abstraction. The narrators or readers of a higher educational level made more high-level abstraction extratextual comments than narrators or readers of a lower educational level. In addition, narrators or readers of a higher educational level challenged children to be involved in the narration or reading more than narrators or readers of a lower educational level. Thus, they made more prompts and asked more questions about specific and easily perceived objects to make children be involved in the narration or reading—for example, examining pictures or naming objects that they had already named before, as indicated in the following extract read from the folktale "The Wolf and the Seven Kids":
Once upon a time, a wolf, whose name was Greedy, wanted to devour the seven kids, who lived with their mother in a cottage in the woods.
Mother (looking at the picture): Can you see the wolf?
Child: Yes.
Then one day there was the right moment! Mother Goat was going out shopping.
Mother: Where is Mother Goat? Where is she going?
Child: Shopping.
Sometimes adults and children were engaged in a more essential conversation that contributed to (1) justifying attitudes, (2) providing information, (3) relating the story to the children’s daily lives.
Justifying Attitudes (narrated extract from the folktale “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”)
...the kid is running, getting a pair of scissors, and also the big needle and thread.
Child: The kid went and fetched them before you can say Jack Robinson.
Narrator: Well done, Elias! Just before you can say Jack Robinson! The kid ran so fast so that they could do their job, before the wolf wakes up.
Providing Information (narrated extract from the folktale "The Three Little Pigs")
...one of the little pigs built a house of wood.
Child: Where did he find the wood?
Narrator: He found it in the woods.
Child: What about the logs?
Narrator: He cut down trees in the woods.
Child: With the machine?
Narrator: Yes, with the machine.
Another little pig built a house of reeds.
Narrator: Do you know where he found the reeds?
Child: Where?
Narrator: In the lake.
Child: Are there any reeds in the lake?
Narrator: Yes, there are reeds in the lake.
Relating the Story to the Children's Daily Lives (extract read from the story "Mister Smart")
...and apart from everything else it also showed the time, the weather, and could sing happily.
Child: I would like to have an alarm clock like that, but it's impossible.
Narrator: Why is it impossible?
Child: It is, because I haven't got one, because I live in Hortiatis.
Narrator: Why do you live in Hortiatis and not in Smartville?
Research has suggested that the use of abstract concepts during reading promotes a child's linguistic development (Leseman & de Jong, 1998); therefore, many parent training programs teach reading approaches that combine frequent verbal exchanges between adults and children on the basis of questions such as "why" and "how" in addition to elaboration of children's phrases and other high-level abstraction extratextual interaction (Arnold, Lonigan, Whitehurst, & Epstein, 1994).
In the present study, we found that such extratextual interactions during storytelling to children were more common among parents with a higher education; however, of the total number of extratextual interactions, only a small percentage could be categorized as high-level abstraction (Table 2). Categories that were described as low-level abstraction and concrete thought (feedback to children, questions about names, drawing children's attention, clarification) constituted the highest percentage of adults' extratextual interaction, regardless of the approach employed by the adults and their educational background.
These results suggest that Greek families treat narration and story reading to children as a child-centered activity, principally aimed at entertaining children. Specifically, the study suggests that the fundamental purpose of using children's books with preschool children is to challenge them aesthetically (Glazer, 1991; Rosenblatt, 1991), thus contributing to their love of reading. Whether the storytelling by Greek parents observed in this study contributed to their children’s literacy development is difficult to determine, given that the majority of verbal exchanges between adults and children during story narrating and reading was of low-level abstraction and involved items that are used for communication between adults and children on other occasions besides storytelling.
* Little Red Riding Hood: 9 instances
* The Wolf and the Seven Kids: 5 instances
* The Three Little Pigs: 4 instances
* Hansel and Gretel: 1 instance
* Sleeping Beauty: 1 instance
* Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 1 instance
* Improvisations: 3 instances
Readings
* Little Red Riding Hood: 6 instances
* The Wolf and the Seven Kids: 3 instances
* The Three Little Pigs: 5 instances
* Hansel and Gretel: 3 instances
* Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 2 instances
* Cinderella: 2 instances
* Beauty and the Beast: 2 instances
* The Tin Soldier: 3 instances
* Sleeping Beauty
* Rapunzel
* Mrs. Kind
* The Magic Flute
* Puss in Boots
* Pinocchio
* Rosy and Snowy
* The Nutcracker
* 6 Aesop's tales
* 24 short stories
This article has been accessed 4,414 times through June 1, 2007.
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College of Education
Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative
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* The story was told without interruptions; thus, adults tended to avoid asking questions, did not strike up conversations with the child, and, when there were questions, tended to give short answers and continued with the story. This pattern was observed particularly during narration.
* Children tended to be involved in the story, either impromptu—with questions, comments, or by adding up story segments—or by being challenged by adults—through questions, drawing children's attention to pictures, urging them to recall personal experiences or information, asking them to justify the characters' actions, etc.
In order to investigate the type of extratextual interactions occurring during storytelling, 88 stories were picked and analyzed in terms of the extratextual interactions involved.
Part II: Extratextual Interactions during Storytelling
Sample
In order to have as homogeneous a sample as possible, the stories that were analyzed were chosen according to the type of material (literary or general knowledge book) and the discourse type (fiction or poetry). Excluded were 11 informational stories, 2 stories in which no interaction took place, 5 stories in verse, and 6 picture books with very little text. Thus, the sample comprised 88 entertaining literary texts. Of these, 58 were folktales, 21 of which were narrated and 34 read; 3 were improvised stories, which were narrated; 6 were Aesop's tales, which were read; and 24 short stories, which were read.
Coding Extratextual Interaction
The extratextual interactions involved in the stories were coded on the basis of content and were examined separately for parents and children. The specific coding procedure was based on other research on storytelling that examined adult and children's extratextual interaction (Hammett, van Kleeck, & Huberty, 2003; Neuman, 1996; Yaden, Smolkin, & Conlon, 1989). The specific procedure involved the following extratextual interaction categories:
1. Attention. Extratextual interaction with a view to drawing children's attention (by calling the children's names: "Can you hear, Irene?" or by drawing their attention to illustrations: "Can you see the dog?")
2. Names. Extratextual interaction with a view to making children familiar with the names of objects, incidents, characters, and setting ("This is a lion.")
3. Asking about names. Questions about the names of objects, incidents, characters, etc., of the story ("What is she wearing on her head?" "Where is the lion caged?")
4. Feedback. Extratextual interaction that aims at praising, confirming, or correcting children's extratextual interaction ("Yes, Snow White was pretty." "No, he was not dropping pebbles; he was dropping crumbs.")
5. Repetition. Verbatim repetition of children's words or phrases (child: "a dog"; parent: "a dog")
6. Elaboration. Extratextual interaction through which a child's words or phrases are elaborated by adding extra information (child: "a bee"; parent: "a flying bee")
7. Organizing the activity. Extratextual interaction through which children are kept intrigued by the story ("I'm going ahead.")
8. Prediction. Questions asked to a child with a view to giving information about facts and incidents in the story that have not yet been told ("What did the animals do next?")
9. Relating the story to real life. Commentary and questions to children with a view to relating the plot of the story to everyday experiences and informing them about facts and objects in the story ("What color is your own toothbrush?" "We drive a car; they used to drive a cart."
10. Recalling information. Questions to children in order to make them recall incidents and details in the story.
11. Clarifying. Extratextual interaction with a view to motivating picture description, word explanation, and interpretation of characters' attitudes.
12. Asking for clarification. Questions that motivate children to describe or interpret the characters' attitudes in the story ("Why do you think they were happy?")
With regard to children's extratextual interaction, coding involved the following 9 of the 12 categories made by adults:
1. Names. Children name objects, incidents, characters ("a dog").
2. Questions about names. Children ask about names of objects, incidents, and characters ("What's this?").
3. Repetition. Children repeat the exact words or phrases that the narrator/reader had used.
4. Relating the story to real life. Children relate incidents in the story to their own personal experiences ("I'll take out the thorn for you." "I want a watch like this for me, too.").
5. Recalling information. Children point out details in the story and give information (Parent: "What does a matchmaker do?" Child: "She finds grooms.")
6. Prediction. Children predict the development of the plot ("Now the wolf is going to come in.").
7. Clarifying. Children describe pictures and explain attitudes ("Here is the little pig going to his little brother.").
8. Questions for clarification. Children ask for explanations about incidents and attitudes ("What is little John doing?" "How did he go?").
9. Parallel reading. The category involves only children's extratextual interaction and “reading”/“narrating” words or phrases in the story, while parents are reading/narrating (Parent: "and Little Red Riding Hood set off…" Child: "…to go to her grandmother's.").
With regard to the reliability of coding interventions, the authors first categorized the extratextual interactions of five stories. Then they discussed the categories with three colleagues who had read the stories; no different opinions were expressed. The statistical analysis of the extratextual interactions was performed with SPSS and involved descriptive statistics, frequency statistics, and mean comparisons (independent samples t-test). Minimum level of significance was p < 0.05.
Results
The comparison of children's and adults' extratextual interactions—separately for narration and story reading—demonstrated that, with regard to narration, adults' extratextual interactions were less frequent than those of children. With regard to story reading, the number of adults' extratextual interactions was greater than the number of children's extratextual interactions (Tables 2 & 3).
Mean comparison per extratextual interaction category among younger and older children demonstrated that children up to 3 years old made more extratextual comments than older children with regard to names (t = 2.032, p < 0.05). Older children made more extratextual comments than younger ones for the category questions for clarification (t = -3.198, p < 0.05), whereas adults made more extratextual comments when they read/narrated to older children for the category clarification (t = -2.385, p < 0.05).
Discussion
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In Western societies, narration and reading are two approaches through which young children with the help of adults become familiar with their heritage and learn their native language (Teale, 1984). Despite some similarities, the two approaches differ in significant ways:
* Material origin. Reading is based only on written texts, whereas narration exploits sources from both oral texts and anonymous writing.
* Memory. Although essential to the narrator, who must have a priori knowledge of the story, memory is insignificant for the reader.
* Visual contact with the audience. Although constant for the narrator, visual contact is limited for the reader because there is always a book between a reader and his or her audience.
* Story dramatization. For narrators, story dramatization is easier than for readers because narrators tell the story as a personal experience with their own judgment and interpretation, whereas readers are committed to the written text (Giannikopoulou, 1996).
In Greece, both approaches are employed for storytelling to preschool children. Narration is mostly used by adults at a lower educational level for folktales, perhaps because folklore is still vivid among people of a lower social status (Natsiopoulou, 2002). In contrast, reading stories is preferred by adults at a higher educational level, possibly because of their familiarity with children's books (Natsiopoulou, 2002), including folktales.
Both during narration and reading, there are verbal exchanges between adults and children, which in the present study were made exclusively about the content of the story. Extratextual interaction about writing styles (i.e., naming letters, highlighting words or sentences) was not observed. Adults' focus on the content of the story has been observed in other studies as well (Hammett, van Kleeck, & Huberty, 2003; Neuman, 1996; Morrow & Smith, 1990). In the present study, extratextual interaction about writing styles did not occur because the texts used did not invite that kind of extratextual interaction; it has often been noted that adults' extratextual interaction about writing is observed when they read alphabet books (Stadler & McEvoy, 2003; van Kleeck, 1998). van Kleeck (1998) maintains that when parents read to preschool children, first they emphasize the story, irrespective of its type (simple story, poetry, story with emphasis on the alphabet). They subsequently, in the case of storybooks, emphasize the plot; in the case of alphabet books, they make comments about the alphabet, morphemes at the beginning of words, etc. It is worth noting that alphabet books are common in Greece but were not chosen by participants in the present study. A possible explanation is that parents who had been asked to tell their children stories made their choice only among simple stories with pleasant plots and action in order to be able to motivate discussion about story content (Stadler & McEvoy, 2003).
The quantity and quality of verbal exchanges between adults and children during storytelling were affected by the approach employed (narration vs. reading) and the educational level of the adults. It was initially observed that reading stories resulted in more verbal exchanges between adults and children than narrating stories. The comparison of means indicated that during reading, adults' extratextual interaction was more frequent than during narration in terms of both high-level abstraction (i.e., relation of the story to real life, elaborated sentences) and low-level abstraction and concrete thought (i.e., inducing children to focus on pictures, names of objects, and incidents). In the present study, the narration approach was chosen principally by parents with less education. Torr (2004) found that parents who left school at an early age read stories quietly to children and interacted occasionally with them. In the present study, the small number of extratextual interactions during narration could be partly attributed to the adults’ storytelling technique.
Verbal interaction between adults and children appears to be frequent during reading when children's interaction is motivated by pictures in a storybook. Yaden, Smolkin, and Conlon (1989) maintained that 50%-60% of the questions asked by preschool children during storytelling at home involved characters and incidents in illustrations. In the present study, it was discovered that during reading, children's extratextual interaction was considerably more frequent than during narration with regard to the categories questions about names of objects and incidents and questions for clarification about pictures and attitudes. Thus, there was a greater number of adults' extratextual interactions during reading for the categories names (t = -4.56, p < 0.05) and clarification (t = -7.09, p < 0.05); there was a positive correlation between children's questions about names and adults' extratextual interaction for the category names (r = 0.736, p < 0.01) and children’s questions about clarification and adults extratextual interaction for the category clarification (r = 0.505, p < 0.01). The specific correlation between extratextual interaction categories that are considered to be low-level abstraction by researchers demonstrates that during reading, illustrations enhance verbal interaction between adults and children, principally in terms of the verbal exchanges requiring concrete thought.
The educational level of the narrator or reader was discovered to be related to adults' extratextual interaction, both in terms of high- and low-level abstraction. The narrators or readers of a higher educational level made more high-level abstraction extratextual comments than narrators or readers of a lower educational level. In addition, narrators or readers of a higher educational level challenged children to be involved in the narration or reading more than narrators or readers of a lower educational level. Thus, they made more prompts and asked more questions about specific and easily perceived objects to make children be involved in the narration or reading—for example, examining pictures or naming objects that they had already named before, as indicated in the following extract read from the folktale "The Wolf and the Seven Kids":
Once upon a time, a wolf, whose name was Greedy, wanted to devour the seven kids, who lived with their mother in a cottage in the woods.
Mother (looking at the picture): Can you see the wolf?
Child: Yes.
Then one day there was the right moment! Mother Goat was going out shopping.
Mother: Where is Mother Goat? Where is she going?
Child: Shopping.
Sometimes adults and children were engaged in a more essential conversation that contributed to (1) justifying attitudes, (2) providing information, (3) relating the story to the children’s daily lives.
Justifying Attitudes (narrated extract from the folktale “The Wolf and the Seven Kids”)
...the kid is running, getting a pair of scissors, and also the big needle and thread.
Child: The kid went and fetched them before you can say Jack Robinson.
Narrator: Well done, Elias! Just before you can say Jack Robinson! The kid ran so fast so that they could do their job, before the wolf wakes up.
Providing Information (narrated extract from the folktale "The Three Little Pigs")
...one of the little pigs built a house of wood.
Child: Where did he find the wood?
Narrator: He found it in the woods.
Child: What about the logs?
Narrator: He cut down trees in the woods.
Child: With the machine?
Narrator: Yes, with the machine.
Another little pig built a house of reeds.
Narrator: Do you know where he found the reeds?
Child: Where?
Narrator: In the lake.
Child: Are there any reeds in the lake?
Narrator: Yes, there are reeds in the lake.
Relating the Story to the Children's Daily Lives (extract read from the story "Mister Smart")
...and apart from everything else it also showed the time, the weather, and could sing happily.
Child: I would like to have an alarm clock like that, but it's impossible.
Narrator: Why is it impossible?
Child: It is, because I haven't got one, because I live in Hortiatis.
Narrator: Why do you live in Hortiatis and not in Smartville?
Research has suggested that the use of abstract concepts during reading promotes a child's linguistic development (Leseman & de Jong, 1998); therefore, many parent training programs teach reading approaches that combine frequent verbal exchanges between adults and children on the basis of questions such as "why" and "how" in addition to elaboration of children's phrases and other high-level abstraction extratextual interaction (Arnold, Lonigan, Whitehurst, & Epstein, 1994).
In the present study, we found that such extratextual interactions during storytelling to children were more common among parents with a higher education; however, of the total number of extratextual interactions, only a small percentage could be categorized as high-level abstraction (Table 2). Categories that were described as low-level abstraction and concrete thought (feedback to children, questions about names, drawing children's attention, clarification) constituted the highest percentage of adults' extratextual interaction, regardless of the approach employed by the adults and their educational background.
These results suggest that Greek families treat narration and story reading to children as a child-centered activity, principally aimed at entertaining children. Specifically, the study suggests that the fundamental purpose of using children's books with preschool children is to challenge them aesthetically (Glazer, 1991; Rosenblatt, 1991), thus contributing to their love of reading. Whether the storytelling by Greek parents observed in this study contributed to their children’s literacy development is difficult to determine, given that the majority of verbal exchanges between adults and children during story narrating and reading was of low-level abstraction and involved items that are used for communication between adults and children on other occasions besides storytelling.
* Little Red Riding Hood: 9 instances
* The Wolf and the Seven Kids: 5 instances
* The Three Little Pigs: 4 instances
* Hansel and Gretel: 1 instance
* Sleeping Beauty: 1 instance
* Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 1 instance
* Improvisations: 3 instances
Readings
* Little Red Riding Hood: 6 instances
* The Wolf and the Seven Kids: 3 instances
* The Three Little Pigs: 5 instances
* Hansel and Gretel: 3 instances
* Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 2 instances
* Cinderella: 2 instances
* Beauty and the Beast: 2 instances
* The Tin Soldier: 3 instances
* Sleeping Beauty
* Rapunzel
* Mrs. Kind
* The Magic Flute
* Puss in Boots
* Pinocchio
* Rosy and Snowy
* The Nutcracker
* 6 Aesop's tales
* 24 short stories
This article has been accessed 4,414 times through June 1, 2007.
University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
College of Education
Early Childhood and Parenting Collaborative
Send comments to ECRP Editor
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