(My favourite meme in these days of self-isolation:)
“Given the fact that word mastery in adulthood is correlated with early acquisition of words, shared picture book reading offers a potentially powerful strategy to prepare children for competent literacy skills...Reading aloud is the best way to help children develop word mastery and grammatical understanding, which form the basis for learning how to read.” - Dominec Massaro, Ph.D.
This is the 21st blog post entry of the 2019-20 school year. Last entry we explored why reading aloud at home is the single most powerful thing parents struggling to make sense of a world turned upside down can do when trying to find the time and technology to access this unexpected world of online classroom learning is simply not working for a family. This blog entry explores why teachers are offering and encouraging so many opportunities for listening to, or reading along with, read alouds as part of students' daily ongoing learning experience through this COVID-19 pandemic.
It is my intention to begin exploring some learning options such as games and strategies for playing with language to support learning to read at home in the days of COVID-19, but before I do that next week, I want to respond to a few questions I have been asked about why there is a daily read aloud - especially of picture books - on the student blogs they are expected to listen to, in addition to reading with them aloud at home. I think this is a pretty important question that really gets to the heart of experiential, engaged learning-to-read opportunities at the elementary level of schooling.
Massaro (2015 - above) noted the correlation between mastery of complex, adult language (both using and understanding it) with the early exposure to - and acquisition of - words in small children. Becoming a highly literate, knowledgeable adult is not an accident; it has it's roots in childhood. In fact, one could say that literate adults have been well-rooted in a read-aloud world.
This is a key understanding that supersedes all other socio-economic factors; a child who is offered frequent read aloud interactions will grow up to become a literate adult with greater potential for success in the world regardless of where they grew up, how wealthy their family was, whether university education was present or not. This is a well-documented and researched fact - learning to read can offer powerful opportunities for equity in terms of access to education and opportunity. Not a perfect equalizer, but a powerful one for sure.
This is the first reason why there are so many read alouds needed in a childhood experience, to gain access to the advanced language forms, structures and vocabulary that will vault a child's awareness from basic, 'lazy' language to advanced, challenging words that extend and provoke thinking and connections in a child's mind. Massaro, who studies language acquisition and literacy across all ages, noted, "picture books are two to three ties as likely as parent-child conversations to include a word that isn't among the 5,000 most common English words" (2015). So we offer children multiple opportunities across a school day to interact with read aloud experiences, both with teachers and their peers as well as digitally, because read aloud experiences broaden their knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, language structures, rhythm and syntax.
If we want our children to grow up to be masters of effective use of language and language comprehension - and I am pretty confident that is what we are all expecting when we send a child to school - then we need to ensure they have multiple opportunities for continually expanding and enhancing language knowledge. Best way to do this is through read aloud experiences, frequently and with different voices and interpretations. So we do - we really do - offer children many daily opportunities to participate in read alouds!
Children listen to read alouds - sometimes as they dance around, stand on their heads or build with lego - sometimes just sitting and listening. Whole body listening is something I learned to accept as a young mother when not all of my children would just sit and listen as I read to them every day. Sometimes they snuggled; sometimes they wiggled; sometimes they never made it to the chair at all! Did that mean they were not listening? No! Sometimes the dancer, the prancer, the builder was listening with much greater attentiveness than the quiet one snuggled in beside me. My children taught me not to worry about what their body was doing during the read aloud, becoming a teacher helped me understand that some children need to move while they listen and trying to hold themselves in one position to keep me happy interfered with their understanding of the story as well as their awareness of new language, story structure or a particular rhythm a story might contain. When children listen with their whole body, they are not necessarily tuned out - they are just trying to keep their body entertained so their brain can tune into and connect with the story. Read alouds offer children an opportunity to engage in listening in an active way, making sense of and practicing the language as they also act out the story or recreate it with lego, drawing, etc.
With many years (15!) experience as a grade 5/6 teacher, one of my favourite practices as I engaged in our daily read aloud was to ask the students to always have a pencil and a sketch book in hand when I read. They could be gathered on the carpet for listening (and most were) but I never worried if they wanted to stretch out on their tummies at the back or stand up at a table or tuck under a chair - wherever they were comfortable and could put pen to paper, they would sketch and summarize as I read. This was not work to be 'marked' or 'graded'; this was their way of actively capturing what the story had to say as we worked our way through a novel or a lengthier picture book. Active listening, whole body listening, quiet listening - whatever works for the child to help them make sense of new experiences and language at work and play. This is another reason for a read aloud.
As children develop their ow reading proficiencies, they begin to also make sense of what they are reading. At first, decoding is painful as they try to sound out the simplest of words. One of the best strategies we can encourage through these early independent read-aloud attempts is to work hard at decoding the word, take a deep breath and go back and re-read the sentence. This is the most efficient way to make sense of that word they just struggled do hard to decode - and reading it twice helps make it 'stick' longer in the brain when it pops up again on the page a few minutes later - as happens so frequently! Read alouds take that particular, high energy and concentration responsibility away from the child and encourage listening for the sake of enjoyment - to feel the action in the story, question the character's decisions, laugh or cry out loud. Although a child might be encouraged to read the 'first paragraph' or the 'first 'page' in a book they find challenging, taking over when they are tired of decoding but are still interested in the events, offers a respite in brain engagement that will be most welcomed!
One of the primary reasons I like to promote multiple read aloud experiences in a day for children is the whole aspect of human connection - over the years I have come to understand that children actually seek out, crave and need human connection. Sometimes it seems to me like my grandchildren rarely see humans when they are watching shows on tv or their tablets - so much is animated or anime in the 21st century. While I grew up with the Friendly Giant and Mr. Dress-Up as a Canadian kid, and my children thrived on Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers' Neighbourhood, my grandchildren seem to be immersed in animated experiences that don't include human-to-human interactions most of the time. Am I surprised when they seek out youtube channels with people assembling lego or a small child playing? Hardly! They are, in my opinion, looking for a human to connect with in a deeply rooted human way. Read alouds, shared by other humans who are teachers or people within their circle of experience, offer an opportunity to connect with someone familiar - to say, "Oh! I know that person!" or "Look at my teacher reading at her home!" that promote connection and affection in a way that humans have sought with each other since the dawn of time. As we share our stories, we are also sharing examples of citizenship, kindness, making mistakes and recovering, caring for each other and learning together. This is a critical component of childhood learning and growth that is easily met through a shared read aloud experience.
In these days of isolation and separation, read alouds offer us opportunities to remember, reflect and re-ignite interests that might otherwise fade in a narrowed world. As we share stories, rhymes, songs, laughter and tears, we also keep our interests in nature, sports, adventure, activity, music, imagination and a multitude of other interests alive and share new experiences, not yet lived, within the pages of a book. Books offer comfort, excitement, information, feelings. They bring us together while acknowledging the power and energy of our differences. In these days when our worlds are contained and narrowed, books invite our imaginations to soar wildly into possibilities we can only imagine just now - and these are powerful energies we need to keep alive during our days of containment. Our bodies may be constrained but books help us know our imaginations need never be!
These are the biggest reasons why read alouds dominate our daily teaching and learning when classes are in session, and when they have moved to a digital environment. We want our children to take adventures with us, consider provocative questions, imagine new worlds and share in our humanity. For, in the end, we are all living an unimagined experience together in isolation and it is the 'together' part that will sustain us into the future.
Lorraine Kinsman, Principal
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