What type of books are you reading to your preschool children?

In an article from Reading Research Quarterly published in 2009, authors K. Hammett Price, A van Kleech and C.J. Huberty discussed results from three studies that compare the talk during book sharing between parents and their preschoolers.  Specifically this article focused on parents engaging with their preschools while reading storybooks and reading expository (non-fiction) books.  

It is widely known that when parents read with their children, they create a dynamic between themselves, their child and the book they are reading.  This early literacy knowledge is a foundation children bring with them as they enter school.  The focus of this particular article discusses the types of books parents read aloud, and the type of skills or language that are gained by their children.  

When parents read books to their children, they typically participate in extratextual talk.  This means they talk beyond the actual text they are reading with their children.  “Even though parents may not view their extratextual talk as a method of explicit teaching, they do adjust their interactions in ways that support the child’s learning.”  (Rogoff, 1990, 2003)

Parents who spend the most time reading to their children give their children a longer-lasting advantage over children whose parents spend less time reading or interacting with them.  The same advantages happen based on the amount of general talk parents do with their children as well.  “(The)...amount of talk was strongly associated with the children’s trajectory of language learning.”

When teachers read aloud to their class, they are not only reading a story they hope their students will enjoy, but teachers are doing a number of different things.  They may be modeling their thoughts to show the students extended ways to interpret the text, they may be connecting students background knowledge by asking if someone has had a similar experience to a character in a story, or they may be asking open-ended questions to encourage deeper thinking.  During book sharing at home, especially if a child is preschool age, parents can and do these very same things!  When parents engage with their child in these ways, they are giving their child a head start on what others may only learn for the first time in the school setting.  Children can learn targeted vocabulary better when a parent both reads, and discusses a text.  

The general differences children can take away from storybooks versus expository books are:  Storybooks have more narrative, include more character’s intentions, perspectives, mental state verbs (e.g.thought, knew) and temporal connectives (e.g. and, then).  Expository books are written with more purpose of providing more scientific type of information about a topic, use more comparison and contrast, and use technical vocabulary/academic words.  Expository texts also expose students to the following literacy extensions:  labels, captions, keys, and dialogue bubbles which are used to aid in interpretation of diagrams.  At the preschooler level, expository books have a higher vocabulary diversity.  

As students progress from grade to grade, the number of storybooks used in the classroom become less and less.  Storybooks are replaced by expository texts.  Therefore, the earlier a student can become comfortable with, and understand literacy feature differences between different genre, the farther ahead the student has the potential of being over his/her peers.  

                                   ~ltk

Research Article:   3 of 5

Talk during Book Sharing between Parents and Preschool Children: A Comparison between Storybook and Expository Book Conditions

Lisa Hammett Price, Anne van Kleeck and Carl J. Huberty

Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 2009), pp. 171-194