Children's Literature Strategies
Course
Picture Book Strategies [10:18]
I'd like to talk with you about strategies for sharing picture books. Of course when we're talking about picture books, we're usually talking about children and kindergarten through third grade. But I hope to also make a case for how picture books can be a really wonderful resource for older students as well.
First let's start with, probably the most traditional use of picture books with young children, and that is simply reading them out loud from cover to cover. This has been going on since there were books, even before we told stories to children in our laps or in a small circle. And although sometimes people discount the old ways, it has still been found to be a really tremendous way to welcome children into literacy, whether as parents with children on our laps or grandparents snuggling with a little one, or in a classroom or a library setting where you gather the children together on the floor, on a rug, or even just out loud where they're sitting on desks or tables. Reading a book out loud to kids in just five, eight, ten minutes, it doesn't have to be a long book or a lot of time, it's a great way to introduce them to so many things.
What reading aloud does is really phenomenal. It introduces children to what a story is and how story language is different from our everyday conversational language—full of metaphors and figurative language and dialogue and all kinds of beautiful literary language that kids might not necessarily hear on television for example, or at home, or in the playground. And so the language of reading is very much the language of story and if kids don't hear it first, it makes it really difficult for them to learn to read it.
So that's one of the major benefits of reading books out loud to kids, especially kids who come from homes or communities where they haven't had much exposure to books and literature. Therefore the leap from everyday language to story language is even more challenging.
So even older kids, not kindergarten but third graders who are already reading on their own somewhat, need to hear story books read out loud, so that they can have that audio component, they can hear the words. And as they're learning to decode them in their own reading, they'll have a basis for understanding that. Reading aloud brings us all together and we can all talk about that story that the librarian read or that story that the teacher read to us. So that's a very powerful sort of social glue, that is a lovely byproduct of reading out loud.
And then of course there's just the words and the framework that you're introducing to kids. So that you're building their literary heritage, their familiar with vocabulary, all those things.
So reading a lot of something that should happen every day. Bill Martin used to say, "Kids should hear a thousand books before they came to school." Yes, a lot of words and books need to be part of children's lives as they're learning to decode, read, and comprehend language. So I cannot say enough about the power and value of reading aloud. A lot of schools have whole campus wide where everyone's reading. Our teacher or librarian is reading to everyone, all at the same time. That's a great practice too. Whether it's silent reading or a read aloud model.
Then there's a spin on the read aloud that a lot of people also find very meaningful for instruction. The Interactive Read Aloud. This is where you're reading aloud a picture book to kids from cover to cover, beginning to end. But instead of simply reading the story straight, you are infusing some instruction and you're interacting with the text or the students are interacting with the text or with you. For example, you might hold up the book, show the cover and say, "What do you think this book is going to be about?" So already you're engaging them in predicting which is an essential component of reading skill. The more kids guess as they're reading the better comprehenders they are, which seem counter-intuitive, you think you shouldn't guess, you should know. But guessing is where we all start.
And in fact even as adults, we do a lot of guessing before we can confirm what it is we've read or understood.
So predicting is one or conversely, as you're reading a story out loud you might read a sentence and not finish it, just stop before the end and see if the kids can finish the sentence. It's also predicting but that instead of at the beginning, you're infusing that as you read throughout the story, stopping at key points, getting them to say what do you think will happen next, what do you think, how do you think the story ends, how do you think this sentence ends. So that interacting with the images the pictures, with the story language with Kids, you and the kids, kids and the book, that sort of interactive read aloud is also a really useful strategy for sharing picture books.
It's a little messier because kids can be unpredictable. But it can also be a lot of fun and it's certainly very active so the kids are not sitting passively. But they're really getting into the story with you. So that's a second strategy that's just very powerful and very useful for sharing picture books with young kids.
A third strategy takes us in a different direction. And this is building on the visual literacy that picture books provide. I particularly love the art of the picture book. The illustrations in my view are some of the most beautiful art being created for children. And a picture book is, a lot of people say, children's first experience with fine art. It's almost a museum in a book, where they can see beautiful art created just for them. But art that also communicates story. It communicates a character and something's happening with that character, a place or something interesting about the place. Action and a satisfying resolution, all visually.
So even before kids can read words, they can look at the images and illustrations and understand story from the visuals. That is an essential part of visual literacy. They're also learning that in English, our language moves from the left to the right, and books are created so that you look left and to the right. And those kinds of things are invisible parts of reading that tuning into the art in the visuals really helps kids notice.
I even like to have kids make art, like the art of the picture books that they love. Whether it's collage art like Eric Carle and his Brown Bear, Brown Bear, where you have the kids make more animals and more colors and create their own class books that go beyond the book that they love. Or if you're demonstrating watercolors or you have the art teacher come in and show how the art in linoleum print might have been made or even photography looking at how artist use photography, computer skills, all kinds of media are used in children's book illustrations. And having kids tune into that can both be fun for building visual literacy but also promote the arts and inspire kids who maybe want to think about art as their outlet, as their way to express themselves.
Number four, another piece of using picture books strategically, is to compare and contrast. Now these are for slightly older kids. First grade, second grade, maybe older, where you take two books on the same subject. I particularly like to focus on folk tales because those are so rich and cultural nuance. So for example, you take two versions or variants of a Cinderella story. And you read them both out loud, and then you talk about how the author, reteller, and the artist or Illustrator have communicated this version of Cinderella. And what are the similarities between the two? Does Cinderella go to one ball, two balls, three balls? Does she have a glass slipper, a first slipper, does she have one stepsister or two, is there a stepmother, is she good, is she evil? Each culture has its own spin on Cinderella. Some experts say there almost a thousand different versions of Cinderella around the world, hundreds and hundreds of years old, with all kinds of twists and turns. And kids see that right away when you use two books that have that same thread, that approach it differently. And that compare and contrast involves higher level thinking and synthesis and analysis that takes a picture book to a whole other level.
And then finally, I wanted to end with a plug for sharing picture books with older students too, beyond third grade, on into fourth, fifth and sixth grade and even middle school and high school. If you choose strategically, there are picture books that are really meant to be read by older readers, even adults because they have rich sophisticated art or the language they use is full of irony or literary allusions or figurative language, similes and metaphors for example. Or a lot of picture books that are historical in nature, provide a framework for looking at a time in the past through the art that a five year old is just not going to get, it takes an older student to appreciate the history of that image and the story that set in the past.
So there you go, reading aloud, a basic tried and true activity for picture books, the new twists, the interactive read aloud, using picture books to promote visual literacy and connect with art and the arts. Comparing and contrasting folktale variants, for example. And taking the picture book into the upper grades to look at the more sophisticated uses of that form, are five different ways that picture books can be really useful for building vocabulary and comprehension and story knowledge and literacy in kids of all ages.
This lesson reminds viewers of what Sylvia Vardell calls "tried and true" techniques for sharing picture books, such as reading aloud straight from the text. The lesson also offers fresh ideas for reading picture books with children, including building visual literacy by examining the art of the picture book. Throughout the presentation of these strategies, Vardell explains related, potential benefits of reading aloud to children, such as expanding vocabulary and introducing the language of story.
Practice the skill of interactive reading, sometimes known as "dialogic reading" (Whitehurst, n.d.). Note: if this is already a familiar and comfortable skill for you, consider selecting a book outside the grade level(s) you regularly teach. Or, try a genre or format that you don't typically use as part of read-alouds with your students: perhaps prose, a graphic novel (maybe with use of a document camera to enlarge images), or nonfiction.
1. Select a picture book or a selection from a book that you can read with a student of group of students (children or young adults). On your own, read the book and study the illustrations.
2. Outline some ways to foster interactions between the oral reader and the audience. To help think of ways to engage with listeners, you might apply the "CROWD" template (Whitehurst, n.d.). CROWD consists of five types of prompts for questions, responses and dialogue: Completion, Recall, Open-Ended, Wh- (where, what, why, when, and how), and Distancing. See the Materials for the CROWD template.
3. Practice reading aloud, pausing for prompts and interactions as you have outlined.
4. Conduct your interactive reading with a child or group of children. If possible and with appropriate permissions, video the interactive reading for your review afterward.
Reflect on your experience, including viewing the video if you recorded the session. You might consider the following questions in your reflection.
- What prompt(s) encouraged active participation, or maybe fell flat? Why do you think this was so?
- What types of questions required more time, or perhaps additional explanation in order for students to respond?
- What interactions coincided with your expectations?
- What responses or interjections were easy for you to receive as the person reading aloud? Why?
- What interactions or responses were surprising to you, or perhaps more challenging to handle? Why might this be?
- Would you make changes "next time," and if so, what would you do differently?
The template is based on the following article, which is not introduced in the workshop:
Whitehurst, Grover J. (Russ). "Dialogic Reading: An Effective Way to Read to Preschoolers." Reading Rockets. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/dialogic-reading-effective-way-read-preschoolers (accessed June 26, 2017).
Although the above article is about reading with young children, the examples expand the template to suggest activities for use with older students. Across age/grade level groups, note that the prompts are intended for integration within a read-aloud session, for brief interactions and dialog in the course of reading. The prompts aren't designed to initiate lengthy reading comprehension discussions or substitute for close reading exercises.
Picture book: Novel: Other formats & genres: |
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Picture book: Novel: Other formats & genres: |
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Picture book: Novel: Other formats & genres: |
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Picture book: Novel: Other formats & genres: |
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Picture book: Novel: Other formats & genres: |
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Children's Literature Strategies: Interactive Reading Practice." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2063934?learningModuleId=2063931&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2122876
Additional Resources
About the Author
MLA Citation
Vardell, Sylvia M. "Children's Literature Strategies. Picture Book Strategies [10:18]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, May 2017, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2063934?learningModuleId=2063931&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2063934?learningModuleId=2063931&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 2063934