Annotated Bibliography

Barrentine, S. (1996). Storytime plus dialogue equals interactive read-alouds. In L.B. Gambrell & J.F. Almasi (Eds.) Lively  Discussions! Fostering engaged reading(pp.52-62). Delaware: International Reading Association.

Interactive read-alouds is a practice that allows emerging students to make meaning through dialogue.  Through this active engagement the students construct meanings from the stories they might not have been able to do alone.  Interactive read-alouds is a positive and rewarding experience because it gives many opportunities for all children to participate and benefit from the interaction with their peers.  This type of practice is a very social experience but the children are able to enjoy the stories and understand them through these conversations that they have their peers, their teacher and with their interactions with the text.

Barrentine, S. (1996). Engaging with reading through interactive read-alouds. The Reading Teacher, 50 (1), 36-43.

    Interactive read-alouds support students as they construct meaning based on the story and their personal experiences.  These types of interactions help the students to develop reading strategies that they will need to become independent readers.  A strategy such as predicting helps the students to activate prior knowledge and personal experiences. Students also must be able to compare and contrast their feelings and experiences to the story.  Interactive read-alouds opens the door for the students to respond freely and openly in a social context.  Learning to read is an active process not a passive one and interactive read-alouds the students to be active participants.

Beck, I.L. & McKeown, M.G. (2001). Text talk: capturing the benefits of  read-aloud experiences for young children. The Reading Teacher, 55, (1), 10-21.

Text Talk is an approach to promoting young children's ability to construct meaning from text.  The students build meaning through open ended questions and discussions and through vocabulary building activities from specific words taken from the texts.  In order to make the read-aloud experience beneficial the teacher must maintain the focus of the conversations to the topic at hand.  One way to keep it focused is to monitor the children's talk and by scaffolding their ideas towards constructing meaning from the text.

Bloem, P.L. & Manna, A.L. (1999). A chorus of questions: readers respond to Patricia Polacco. The Reading Teacher, 52, (8), 802-809.

   Second and fourth graders did a literature study of Patricia Polacco and her work.  Through these read-aloud sessions and question and answer periods the teachers found that the students developed better questions and their analysis were at a deeper level.  The questions that the students asked showed that the students were engaging in thought that was aesthetic, that they had active imaginations and minds that were curious.  The students were able to make personal connections with the texts and were able to transact with the texts at various levels and degrees.

 Brown, M.H., Cromer, P.S. & Weinberg, S.H. ( 1986). Shared book experience in kindergarten: helping children come to literacy. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 1, (4), 397-405.

Butler, C. (1980). When the pleasurable is measurable: teachers reading aloud. Language Arts, 57, (8), 882-885.

  Reading aloud is a pleasurable experience but it also can be a very beneficial one.  Reading aloud improves the students' vocabulary, comprehension and their syntax.  Studies have shown that in read-aloud experiences children make gains in comprehension, word knowledge and their interests in reading books on their own increases.  Read-alouds should be a planned activity but the discussion that follows should not.  Read-alouds should be done on a regular basis in all classrooms from preschool to high school.

Clark, A. (1993). Books in the classroom: Caps for Sale. Horn Book Magazine,69, (6), 781-784.

Children love to hear stories over and over again. The story Caps for Sale is an excellent tool for students to have a sense of ownership of the story.  They love to act it out through drama, painting, writing and through discussions.  When students are able to make connections with the texts, interact with the texts and bring in their own personal experiences than teachers know that they have comprehended what they are reading or stories that they have listened to.

 Copenhaver, J.F. (2001). Running out of time: rushed read-alouds in a primary classroom. Language Arts, 79, (2), 148-158.

Dennis, G. & Walter, E. (1995). The effects of repeated read-alouds on story comprehension as assessed through story retellings. Reading Improvement, 32,(3), 140-153.

Feitelson, D., Kita, B. & Goldstein, Z. (1986). Effects of listening to series stories on first graders' comprehension and use of language. Research in the Teaching of English, 20, (4), 339-356.

Goldenberg, C. (1993). Instructional conversations: promoting comprehension through discussion. The Reading Teacher, 46, (4), 316-325.

Instructional conversation is just one approach that can be used to guide reading comprehension lessons and activities.  It is a constructivist approach to curriculum because students are expected to actively build upon their own knowledge and understanding.  In order for these types of conversations to be effective in a classroom the teacher must plan ahead on how they want the conversations to begin and move forward.  The teacher must select a theme before and this theme will become the focal point of the conversations. This planning ahead on the teacher's part will help this type of approach to reading comprehension to be a successful one.

Hickman, J. (1981). A new perspective on response to literature: research in an elementary school setting. Research in the Teaching of English, 15, (4), 343-354.

 Klesius, J.P. & Griffith, P.L. (1996). Interactive storybook reading for at-risk learners. The Reading Teacher, 49, (7), 552-560.

Realizing that children who are not read to at home prior to their entrance into elementary school are behind in their literacy development, Klesius and Griffith wanted to see if they could replicate the lap reading experience the children were missing in a Kindergarten classroom.  The authors took a group of five students and read to them and recreated the lap reading experience.  They realized that this type of experience can be done in a classroom and suggested having volunteers or aides read with a small group of children during independent reading time.  Through this storybook experience the children are able to negotiate the meaning of the text, are socially interactive, they are gaining knowledge of the world around them and they get to experience the pleasures of reading that they were missing prior to school.  These types of experiences are essential in literacy development.

Martinez, M. (1983). Exploring young children's comprehension through story time talk. Language Arts, 60, (2), 202-209.

 In listening to a parent reading picture books to his four year old daughter Martinez thought that she would be able to see the beginning of the comprehension process emerge.  The meanings that the child constructed involved literal and inferential meanings.  The daughter made conclusions and predictions and was able to connect the events that were happening in the story to her own personal experiences.  If the teachers recognize the emergence of the comprehension process during the storybook read-alouds they would see the value behind the read-aloud experience.  If teachers can add these experiences into their classroom routines they could meet the children who enter their rooms where each child is and help them to begin or to continue in their literacy development.

Martinez, M. G. & Teale, W.H. (1993). Teacher storybook reading style: a comparison of six teachers. Research in the Teaching of English, 27, (2), 175-199.

Martinez, M. & Roser, N. (1985). Read it again: the value of repeated readings during storytime. The Reading Teacher, 38, 782-786.

While it is important to provide children with a rich variety of literature it is also important to stress the value of reading a story over again.  Through repeated readings children are able to gain a deeper understanding of the book.  They have more opportunities to clear up any misconceptions, to fill in the holes and to make connections.  In repeated readings children take on more active roles by initiating the conversations and sharing more comments with the group about the story.  Through repeated readings the children gain more control over story structure and have more of an ownership of that story.

Morrow, L.M., O'Connor, E.M., & Smith, J.K. (1990). Effects of a story reading program on the literacy development of at-risk kindergarten children. Journal of Reading Behavior, 22, (3), 255-275.

Morrow, L.M. (1988). Young children's responses to one-to-one story readings in school settings. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, (1) 89-107.

Morrow, L.M. (1985). Retelling stories: a strategy for improving young children's comprehension, concept of story structure, and oral language complexity. The Elementary School Journal, 85, (5), 647-661.

Morrow L.M. (1984). Reading stories to young children: effects of story structure and traditional questioning strategies on comprehension. Journal of Reading Behavior, 16, (4), 273-288.

Rosenhouse, J., Feitelson, D., Kita, B. & Goldstein, Z. (1997). Interactive reading aloud to Israeli first graders: its contribution to literacy development. Reading Research Quarterly, 32, (2), 168-183.

 Sipe, L.R. (2002). Talking back and taking over: young children's expressive engagement during storybook read-alouds. The Reading Teacher, 55, (5), 476-483.

Through expressive engagements children become active participants in the literacy experience.  There are four types of expressive engagements that Sipe describes in the article and each engagement moves the reader a step closer to ownership of that particular story.  The importance of story ownership follows the belief of the power of literacy to change our lives and the lives of children.  It is also important that there is a playfulness and pleasure that comes with reading.  Expressive engagement during storybook read-alouds provides the opportunities for the reader to fulfill this pleasure.

Sipe, L.R. (2000). The construction of literary understanding by first and second graders  in oral response to picture storybook read aloud. Reading Research Quarterly, 35, (2), 252-276.

Smolkin, L.B. & Donovan, C. A. (2001). The contexts of comprehension: the information read aloud, comprehension acquisition, and comprehension instruction in a first grade classroom. The Elementary School Journal,102, (2), 97-122.

    The process of reading comprehension is developmental.  The beginning stage of comprehension is that of comprehension acquisition and then moves later into comprehension instruction.  Information book read aloud allows the process of comprehension acquisition to begin.  This genre provides opportunities for the students to make links from their prior experience to the text.  It also offers many different occasions for all students regardless of their ability to experience a range of comprehension principles.  Some of the comprehension principles include making connections between current texts and ones previously read, summarizing the story, looking at text structure and accessing prior knowledge and relating it to the text.  Through read-aloud sessions the teachers can scaffold, model thinking aloud, provide direct instruction for making meaning and to demonstrate the purpose of rereading a sentence.  The comprehension process can be a social experience and read-alouds allow the students the opportunity to be active participants in the meaning making process of the text and there comprehension of the story begins.

 Strickland, D. S. , Morrow, L.M.(1990). Storybook reading: a bridge to literary language. Reading Teacher, 44, (3), 264-265.

    This article comments on the research studies done in Israel that showed how reading storybooks aloud to children improves the students' reading and listening comprehension skills.  The experimental group in the studies were read to for 15-20 minutes a day and the control group did their everyday language activities during that time.  The results of the studies also helped to change the teachers' attitudes about the importance of storybook reading and its positive impact that it had on the students' comprehension and oral language skills.

Strickland, D. S. & Morrow, L.M. (1989). Interactive experiences with storybook reading. Reading Teacher, 42, (4), 322-323.

Active and interactive involvement with the story assures that children get the full benefit from the storybook experience.  During interactive read-alouds the teacher can use an organized framework that can be modeled and taught to their students.  This organized framework known as the Directed-Listening-Thinking Activity (DLTA) provides the students with a strategy to organize and recapture information from the storybook text.

Taberski, S. (1998). How read-alouds show comprehension strategies. Instructor- Primary, 107, (8), 24-26.

    Read-aloud is a perfect opportunity to teach reading comprehension strategies to the whole class.  It is important for children to know that good readers think a lot about stories as they read.  Thinking while reading helps the readers to understand the story better and to predict what might happen next.  As teachers model these strategies the students will soon be able to internalize them and use them while they are reading independently.

Valencia, S.W.(1991). Assesssment of emergent literacy:storybook reading. The Reading Teacher, 44, (7), 498-500.

Sulzby's assessment tool, the Classification Scheme for Emergent Reading of Favorite Storybooks, began as a research tool but now can be used in the classrooms to trace the development of the children's literacy skills over time.  It is teacher friendly and can be used on a daily basis.  It is designed to be used with the student's favorite storybooks.  The scheme is reliable and is a direct measure of emergent reading and of beginning reading development.  It can be used in conjunction with Marie Clay's Observation Survey and with running records.  It allows the teacher to have the language available to describe a child's performance and it is a valuable tool because there are multiple assessments that shows the child's development over time.

Wan, G. (2000). Reading aloud to children: the past, the present and the future. Reading Improvement, 37, (4), 148-160.

Studies have been done since the early 19th century about the significance of reading aloud to children.  Although there has been some research done more research needs to take place.  Studies need to be done in exploring the home and school connection and read-alouds to children from a diverse home background.  The read-aloud experience can be a simple and inexpensive one but also be rich and fulfilling in the future.

Weaver, C., Gillmeister-Krause, L. & Vento-Zogby. (1996). Teaching and Learning to read. In Weaver, Gillmeister-Krause, & Vento-Zogby. Creating support for effective literacy education (pp.74-93). New Hampshire: Heinemann.

Wood, M. & Salvetti , K.P. (2001). Project Story Boost: read-alouds for students at risk. The Reading Teacher, 55, (1), 76-83.

Project Story Boost is an experimental early literacy intervention for “at risk” Kindergarten children.  These at risk students have limited exposure to storybooks prior to their entrance into school.  During Project Story Boost a volunteer reads with one student on a consistent basis engaging in discussion and the retelling of the story.  The results of this experiment showed that the children made gains in story structure and language skills as assessed through the students' story retellings at the end of the school year.  Two and three years later the students who participated in Project Story Boost in Kindergarten appeared more like their classmates who were not considered at risk as noted through the observations of their classroom teachers.

Yadan, D. (1988). Understanding stories through repeated read-alouds: how many does it take? The Reading Teacher, 41,(6), 556-560.

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