Using Content Rich, Interactive Read Alouds to Build Knowledge and Nudge Thinking in Intermediate Classrooms by Adrienne Gear
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love books. Not just a little. I’m talking heart- stopping, book-sniffing, would-have-a-sleep-over-in-a-book-store-if-I-could, book joy. I have always believed that authentic children’s literature is the single most important teaching tool in EVERY elementary classroom – K-7. Picture books have always been my teaching partners. In fact, I can’t recall a time I started a lesson, literacy or content, without a picture book in my hand. Whether it be a lesson on making connections in reading, using sensory details in writing, or learning about food chains in science – picture books help me anchor my lessons, engage my students, and bring book joy into my classroom. And it’s not just me! More and more teachers comment on how often they use children’s literature in their literacy lessons. One might conclude that, to some degree, literacy practices in elementary schools could be viewed as more engaging than content subjects because literacy teachers tend to incorporate engaging activities such as daily read-alouds and active class discussions centered around fictional narratives. Subject areas such as social studies and science, on the other hand, tend to focus more on knowledge or facts about a particular topic or unit of study and are often accompanied by textbooks, but may lack the engaging “print rich” environment used in literacy lessons.
Nonfiction texts are not often our “go to” picks for conducting engaging read-aloud lessons with our students. Certainly, when it comes to Reading Power strategies, most of my anchor book recommendations, whether picture books, chapter books or novels, could be categorized as fiction. When I survey teachers at my workshops, most will admit that the majority of their read-alouds and classroom libraries are heavily weighted with fictional text. Yet, much research shows that most young readers enjoy nonfiction and may even prefer it to fiction. (Clark & Teravainen-Goff, 2020; Correia, 2011; Doiron, 2003; Ives et al., 2020)
The world of “content rich” nonfiction books available for young readers has undergone extensive and dramatic changes over the past decade. Alphabetized library shelves filled with encyclopedias, my only source of information when I was a child, have been replaced by an abundance of exceptional informational picture books filled with every conceivable subject you could ever want to learn about. Finely crafted nonfiction children’s books have the power to inform, inspire, and get kids fired up about learning. They feature stunning visuals, rich language, and dynamic designs that capture curious minds and invite young readers to think about topics in new and exciting ways. Quite simply, these content-rich books play a huge role in engaging kids, stretching their thinking, and nudging their learning. And research supports this by clearly showing that nonfiction can enhance a child’s literacy development and fuel their natural sense of wonder about the world and how it works (Hwang, H., Lupo, S. M., Cabell, S. Q., & Wang, S. (2021); Duke, N. K., Ward, A. E., & Pearson, P. D. (2021).
One of the simplest, yet most important things we can do in our classrooms to develop thinking, increase knowledge, and build language comprehension is to increase our collections of nonfiction books in our classroom. Below are recommended nonfiction series and authors to help you build a more content-rich classroom collection!
Recommended Nonfiction Series
Fly Guy – Tedd Arnold
Who Would Win? Series - Jerry Pallota
Disgusting Creatures Series – Elise Gravel
Over and Under series – Kate Messner
I’m Trying to Love series – Bethany Barton
Rebel Girls series - Elena Favilli
A First Book of… series – Scott Ritchie
Scholastic Canadian Biography series – (various authors)
Scholastic True or False series (various authors)
Two Truths and a Lie - Ammi-Joan Pacquette
Nat Geo Kids (National Geographic Kids Readers)
TIME for Kids
Let’s Read and Find Out… series (various authors)
Magic Treehouse Fact Tracker - Mary Pope Osborne
Recommended Nonfiction Authors:
Steve Jenkins
Elise Gravel
Nicola Davies
Jason Chin
Jeanette Winter
Seymore Simon
Melissa Stewart
Kate Messner
Candace Flemming
April Pulley Sayre
Gail Gibbons
Kadir Nelson
Joyce Sidman (nonfiction poet)
Douglas Florian (nonfiction poet)
Content-Rich, Interactive Read-Alouds
Reading aloud makes readers. Reading aloud makes writers. Reading aloud changes lives.
- Kate DiCamillo
Building your classroom library with more content-rich books is only the beginning. The next step is knowing what to do with them! There is no shortage of research confirming reading aloud to children to be one of most beneficial activity for building knowledge, language, and engagement. In my workshops, I continually encourage teachers to read aloud every day to their students, no matter what grade they teach. As I mentioned earlier, when surveying teachers at workshops, most admit that the majority of books they choose to read aloud in their classrooms are fiction. Yet, research shows clear benefits of interactive, content rich read-alouds both on young student’s content vocabulary (e.g., Pappas et al., 2003, Smolkin and Donovan, 2001), print knowledge (e.g., Justice & Piasta, 2011), and content knowledge (Strachan, Stephanie, 2015).
Class read-alouds can, of course, be used for the sheer pleasure of a great book: teacher reads, students listen. (I still remember the books my grade six teacher read aloud to us – my favorite part of the day!) But read-alouds can also be used as teaching tools for modelling and engaging students in thinking and talking about the text in your content classes. Interactive read-alouds are just that – interactive! Below is a breakdown of the various interactions occurring during an “interactive” read-aloud:
teacher interacting with the text
teacher interacting with the students
students interacting with the text
students interacting with the teachers
students interacting with each other
When we add content-rich texts into the interactive read-alouds, the benefits multiply! Our students can engage with more complex ideas and vocabulary than what they may be able to read themselves, giving them the tools to build the knowledge they need to engage with more sophisticated texts in the future. In addition, a content-rich read aloud can help “level the literacy playing field” in your classroom, allowing those students who may be unable to access text independently an opportunity to engage in knowledge-building, meaning making, and active discussions. Remember - a struggling de-coder is not always a struggling thinker. By regularly engaging in content-rich read-alouds, we are providing every student an equal opportunity to build knowledge and participate in class discussions.
Below are some of the benefits a student receives from participating in an interactive, content-rich read aloud:
Content-rich, interactive read alouds support…
knowledge building
“brain reading” (thinking)
vocabulary development
listening comprehension
oral language
class discussions
student interest and engagement
The more we can share the fascinating world of wonder and intrigue through content-rich books with every student, the greater their success not only in building new knowledge, but also developing into powerful thinkers. Just think about it – reading one content-rich book aloud to your class can utilize ALL those skills! Now, that’s a substantial payoff, don’t you agree?
Bibliography:
Correia, M. (2011). Fiction vs. informational texts: Which will your kindergarteners choose? Young Children, 66(6), 100–104.
Doiron, R. (2003). Boy books, girl books: Should we re-organize our school library collections? Teacher Librarian, 30(3), 14.
Duke, N. K., Ward, A. E., & Pearson, P. D. (2021). The science of reading comprehension instruction. The Reading Teacher, 74, 663-672. International Literacy Association
Fisher, Douglas, Frey, Nancy. (2019). This is Balanced Literacy, Grades K-6 Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.
Gear, Adrienne. (2003) Reading Power: Teaching Students How to Think While They Read. Pembroke, ON: Pembroke Publishing
Ives, S. T., Parsons, S. A., Parsons, A. W., Robertson, D. A., Daoud, N., Young, C., & Polk, L. (2020). Elementary students’ motivation to read and genre preferences. Reading Psychology, 41(7), 660–679.
Piasta, S.B., Justice, L.M., McGinty, A.S., & Kaderavek, J.N. (2012). Increasing young children’s contact with print during shared reading: Longitudinal effects on literacy achievement. Child Development, 83(3), 810–820
Strachan, Stephanie L. (2015). Kindergarten Students’ Social Studies and Content Literacy Learning from Interactive Read-Alouds. Journal of Social Studies Research 39 (4):207-223
Hwang, H., Lupo, S. M., Cabell, S. Q., & Wang, S. (2021). What research says about leveraging the literacy block for learning. Reading In Virginia, XLII (2020-2021), 35-48
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nonfiction-is-cool-and-our-kids-know-it/
Adrienne Gear is a teacher, author, and literacy consultant from British Columbia. After working for nearly 30 years as an elementary classroom teacher, teacher librarian, and literacy mentor in the Vancouver School district, she moved to Kelowna where she continues to support educators in the BC interior and across the country. Her popular, “powerful” books for elementary and middle-grade teachers, including Reading Power and Writing Power, are used in classrooms and universities across the country, in the parts of the USA, UK, Australia, and Sweden. This article is an edited excerpt from her upcoming new book, Powerful Thinking: Engaging Readers, Building Knowledge, and Nudging Learning in Elementary Classrooms (Pembroke, 2024), is set to be released in early 2024.
Contact Adrienne:
Email: www.readingpowergear.com
Instagram: #readingpowergear
Facebook: @readingpowergear
Book Blog: www.readingpowergear.wordpress.com