Yes. Mother Goose can fly alone! She doesn’t need any help from dialogic reading, which is like close reading for preschool. This formulaic reading exercise was created by Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst an experimental psychologist who is director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. Here is more about Dr. Whitehurst.
By having adults overanalyze the story plot and picture by interrupting and asking specific questions, the child is given too much direction without being allowed to figure things out on their own. Their right to interpret the meaning of the story, or the pictures, by themselves is stolen.
Let’s consider nursery rhyme, which is important to preschoolers. Reading Dr. Seuss, Mother Goose or any of the many rhyming books, can pique a child’s interest to read. The enjoyment of hearing sounds and making sense of the meaning of the verse is exciting to a child.
Dialogic reading as described here breaks up the flow of reading the verse. Parents read the rhyming book once for enjoyment. But then they are to read the book over and proceed to break up the flow of the story and ask questions in a process called PEER.
- Prompts the child to say something about the book,
- Evaluates the child’s response,
- Expands the child’s response by rephrasing and adding information to it, and
- Repeats the prompt to make sure the child has learned from the expansion.
Here is an example of what the reader should do.
Imagine that the parent and the child are looking at the page of a book that has a picture of a fire engine on it. The parent says, “What is this?” (the prompt) while pointing to the fire truck. The child says, truck, and the parent follows with “That’s right (the evaluation); it’s a red fire truck (the expansion); can you say fire truck?” (the repetition).
The goal appears to be to get the reader to read less of the story and the child to read more of the story on their own. This is a hefty ambition for a preschooler—even a kindergartner!
And there is more to prompting children with this method than what I noted above. It involves the following exercises, explained more thoroughly on this link to Reading Rockets. There are completion prompts, and recall prompts, open ended prompts, and wh-prompts (what, where, when, why questions), and distancing prompts.
I can see the reader and child getting all tangled up in questions and answers. For a very young child this could be intimidating. If they don’t know the answers to the questions they might also learn to find the words and the rhyme distasteful.
All of this seems contrived. It makes a pleasant experience into a task, and it takes away the child’s control over the story. Isn’t it better to read the story like the child wants and have them ask the questions? Adults steal the process with dialogic reading.
Take Sam in Green Eggs and Ham. What is Sam? He looks like a dog to me, but does that matter to a child? Should a reader stop and explore Sam? Well, I’d say if the child asked, that would be important to discuss, otherwise, it is the verse in this story and the simple funny pictures that matter. Children are smart enough to understand the pictures on their own.
Consider Humpty Dumpty–the picture of a frightened egg-like character falling off a wall is enough to tell a story. If the parent or child wants to talk about the picture, there shouldn’t be some formula to follow. It comes naturally. Likely, the child will initiate the conversation.
Sometimes young children become obsessed by a book of rhyme or a story. That’s fine. But will they love a book—any book—if they have to do a major thesis on it?
Here is my formula for reading a book to a young child. It is called CHILD.
- Choose a silly or interesting book.
- Have fun.
- Interject enthusiasm (inflection is nice too).
- Laugh (when appropriate) and listen.
- Dream
You don’t need complicated formulas to teach reading early on. Reading is fun. If it is fun, children will want to do it.
In this era of Common Core duplicity, think simplicity in 2016.
Also, I’m in the process of checking on the claims by some that the research indicates dialogic reading works.
Sorry Nancy but dialogic reading has been around for years and is a language approach to reading that is nothing like close reading. The child is encouraged to talk about pictures from their own experiences and point of view. Following what is written is irrelevant since the point is for children to expand their language an essential pre-reading skill. Dialogic prompts are to get parents and teachers to quit doing all the reading and talking and encourage children to read without correcting them. Children tell the story whether it was the one envisioned by the author or not. It is a lot like the steps you suggest when done well. This is nothing new and works well at expanding expressive language and interest in reading.
Yes, I am afraid we do disagree. If you look at all the prompting used in the Reading Rocket article it is, in my opinion, very much like close reading, and it is touted for Common Core ELA in kindergarten.
Don’t get me wrong, discussing the story as you go along is fine especially when the child is initiating the conversation. But the prompting is not that. It is intentionally stopping and pointing things out to students. It can easily break the flow of the story. That’s my concern.
Do you know when it was started? Was it 1998? Close reading has been around too, but for older students.
Also, your point about language expression is well-taken. But if a child loves a story, don’t they talk a lot about it? Don’t they also create their own versions of the story?
But I will continue to read about this and if I change my mind I will eat my hat.
Also, getting children to retell a story they heard is one thing, but expecting a preschooler to read the story back seems pushy.
This is one reason why I want teachers to really, really know the research and theory behind effective teaching practices. The idea that reading is dialogic has been around for a long time. The tedious simplistic approaches being promoted by common core profit mongers are far from the concept of reading as dialogic. One reason why we have lost our power as teachers is because we do not have the professional knowledge to support what we do (and do not do) in the classroom. We never seem to have an historical context or the ability to wade through the distortions that are being foisted on the profession. Teachers who understood the dialogic nature of reading would never fall for these stupid “dialogic” prompts, nor would they tolerate the use of that term “dialogic” to describe those prompts.
Great point, Nancy. I think Whitehurst took the concept forward with the prompts 1992 perhaps?
The point was to expand mean length of utterance so children were not interupted. Prompts were to encourage language and discussion.. But just like RTI, UDL and other methods I have seen well done, I am sure this can be done badly when used innapropriately.
I see. Of course, I respect your professional judgement, Janna. Perhaps with children with disabilities prompts might be of value. I will look more at it. I’m just not keen on most of these programs. But you are more in the thick of all this so you give me pause. Thanks!
Actually, you need to call her out on this. No one with a knowledge of Bakhtin would say “expand the length of an utterance.”
I’m not familiar enough with Bakhtin to call anyone out on it, especially Janna who, though I might disagree, is knowledgeable and a huge advocate for children. My concern remains the prompts that are used to interrupt the story.
The point is also to put some fun back into reading. It is not a lot of fun to have to critically analyze and to be quizzed every time a child read something. I’ve seen grade schools, middle schools and especially high schools zap all the pleasure out of reading. Without encouraging students to read for pleasure once in awhile they will not be avid readers as adults. Only reading what they have to.
I’ll say, Teresa. I’d say that’s especially true for young children just learning how to read. I think some underestimate the power of making reading fun. Thank you.
As in soi many things educational a parallel debate is taking place here in England
See
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2015/12/the-dreary-reign-of-the-childhood-snatchers/
Roger, that is sad. Don’t they read Dickens over there? I would think England would be better. But thank you for sharing.