Cooking with Literature and Grand Conversations: A Cookbook written In Defense of the Read-Aloud

By Ellie Fater

Indiana Wesleyan University

            “Athlete or not, I’m going to make sure you know how to read.” This quote comes from the book Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, which my English teacher read aloud to the class during my freshman year in high school. My English class was comprised of a variety of individuals, from people who did not read for pleasure to self-declared bookworms. Despite our differences, we became close as we waded through Shakespeare, Frankenstein, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Our teacher made us perform Romeo and Juliet, hand each other tissues as we discussed To Kill a Mockingbird, and engage in honest discussions about non-fiction works like Fast Food Nation. I believe that we drew close as peers because all of these activities engaged us with literature in positive ways that were both social and self-reflective. I am an avid reader, but that English class challenged me and made me explore literature even more, which was no simple feat. My teacher truly wanted to make sure we “knew how to read,” or rather, that we knew how to appreciate and respond to literature. Out of all the activities he utilized, I want to discuss one method that is extremely effective in classrooms from kindergarten to high school: the read-aloud.

“Read-aloud” holds different connotations to different people. To younger children, it might mean a fun break in the lesson. Older students may see it as a free pass to take a nap. However, read-alouds are a crucial mechanism to teach a variety of skills in the classroom. Read-alouds can be used to enhance a content-based curriculum, to address a social issue, or to encourage a love of reading in students. Since read-alouds are so dynamic in their purpose, they should be used often in the classroom.

As dynamic as read-alouds are, they are also inclusive of students with various abilities and disabilities. For example, a blind student in a mainstream classroom may not be learning to read text written in English, but he can participate in literary discussions so as to learn concepts including language arts, culture, social issues, and so on. Likewise, read-alouds give English Language Learners exposure to vocabulary and the opportunity to develop social language as they engage in literary discussion. Effective read-alouds are a crucial element of teaching because they enable students to engage with literature and develop content-area skills, language skills, and interpersonal skills.

Recipe for a Good Read-Aloud Book

Time: 15-30 Minutes               Serves: As many readers as possible

Necessary Ingredients, according to EDN and Co. (1989):

©      Engages readers and “holds them spellbound” (p. 87)

©      “Becomes better with each reading; offering new insights and depth”

©      Stimulates lively classroom discussions that continue outside of class

©      Can be read in 15-30 minutes

©      Leads to students reading more of the author’s works

©      “Involves personal dilemmas or decision-making…so that the hearers can expand on the story for themselves” (p. 87)

©      A pinch of humor or strong emotions like sorrow, thankfulness, frustration, etc. are welcome.

Following this recipe accordingly should result in delectable treats like The Laughing Man by J.D. Salinger or Thank You, Ma’am by Langston Hughes.

Note: Reading aloud is not limited to elementary classroom. As the recipe states, a good read-aloud book is intended for as many readers as possible. In fact, according to Ecroyd (1991), “High-school students are under a lot of stress; they don’t have time for pleasurable reading, even if they enjoy reading. Reading aloud to students can motivate students to make time to read on their own” (p. 77). This quote comes from a secondary English teacher who found great success reading aloud to his classes and having them respond through journal entries. Ecroyd also suggests that students learn that reading is not valuable if time is not made for it during the school day. The most effective way to fix this negative assumption is to incorporate read-alouds into the existing curriculum and introduce students to good literature in this meaningful way.

Recipe for an Effective Read-Aloud

Necessary Ingredients:

©      Creative introduction to the book

©      Appropriate character voices, inflections, and gestures

©      Small pauses for effect

©      Gestures that show illustrations to your audience

©      A splash of emotions and personal interest – to add flavor

Mix the introduction until short and sweet. Begin adding your character voices, plot, and language of the book. Mix until the plot seems smooth and well-mixed. Finish by saying, “the end,” and beginning the Grand Conversation.

Recipe for an Effective Grand Conversation

After reading a book aloud in the classroom, a teacher should facilitate a discussion, otherwise known as a Grand Conversation. A successful Grand Conversation will allow students to respond to the book and engage with each other.

Necessary Ingredients:

©      A generous cupful of readers’ unique experiences. According to Sipe (2000), reader-response theory is crucial because it assumes that “the reader actively constructs meaning…because all readers bring different experiences to a text, assume different stances toward it, and understand it through their own unique cultural and psychological filters” (p. 256).

©      A healthy balance between literary analysis and encouraging students to respond personally to the literature (Sipe, 2000, p. 258).

©      Direct instruction for conversing and collaborating. Rebecca Kipp-Newbold, a secondary teacher, found a few effective strategies for facilitating conversation, including choice boards, partner discussions, and Socratic seminars (2010, p. 75).

According to Sipe (2000), people have three impulses when responding to literature including hermeneutic, which is “the drive to understand the story and interpret it” (p. 253). The other two impulses are aesthetic, which helps people respond to the story and allow it to inspire their creative expression, and personalizing, which is “the impulse to link the story to the self and personal experience” (p. 253).

Note: Grand Conversations should be capped off with an interactive activity that proposes practical applications of the themes or lesson of the literature. Kipp-Newbold gave students an assignment in which they selected a poem and read it with a person who was five years younger and a person who was ten years older. Through this, her students were able to facilitate more conversations about poetry and receive a greater variety of insight. Activities should encourage extended learning and application of learning.

Benefits of a Read-Aloud

As with any delicious dish, we want to be sure that we are benefiting from what we consume. Read-aloud lessons are an extremely effective tool to use while teaching, and here are some of the benefits to prove it.

©      Read-alouds allow teachers to set an example as avid readers. In turn, students will learn to love reading and may want to read the same books as the teacher or their peers. The appearance of this dish is crucial to developing readers.

©      Silverman and Crandell (2010) found that “Read-alouds offer rich contexts for teaching new words to children, and often the words introduced through read-alouds of picture books are words that children may not hear in their everyday environments” (p. 320). Coyne (2009) says this is part of Embedded Vocabulary Instruction, which is time-efficient, does not disrupt the lesson, and “provides students with definitions within a meaningful context” (p. 2).

©      Literature can affect positive social change. Lane’s article about African-American children’s literature (1998) states that “we must actively engage in deprogramming destructive ideologies before they crystallize within the mindset of the next generation” (p. 126). Lane also writes the following:

“Children’s literature allows young minds to participate in the production of space, to create their own realities…this activity brings forth a sense of agency that reflexively evokes power, for when we create an image, we can create our own realities and our own selves” (p. 126).

Therefore, reading literature aloud to children allows them to develop themselves and the world around them for the better.

A Special Treat: Informational Read-Alouds

We often think of read-aloud books as humorous, fantastic, or entertaining. While this is commonly the case, I would like to introduce you to a new kind of read-aloud that I think you will find particularly palatable – the non-fiction read-aloud.

Ingredients:

©      Appealing elements of a typical read-aloud – you can prepare these ahead of time and store them until you are ready to prepare this special treat.

©      Hearty content curriculum material

©      Informational or non-fiction texts, otherwise known as low-fat texts.

Allow all ingredients to come to room temperature; that is, allow the proper time in the lesson to use the materials. Mix all ingredients well and let simmer for the appropriate amount of time before starting the Grand Conversation.

Grand Conversation:

            The Grand Conversation for an informational read-aloud varies in that the teacher must guide comprehension more directly. The teacher can encourage students to reread text if they did not understand a concept the first time. According to Smolkin and Donovan (2001), a teacher absolutely must model comprehension strategies like summarizing, creating imagery, and connecting to background knowledge.

Recipe Review:

According to the study done by Smolkin and Donovan (2001), first graders at a lower-middle-class school displayed 395 comprehension coded moves when they listened to a fictional read-aloud, as opposed to the 170 moves they showed after hearing a non-fiction story read aloud. In this classroom, the students “sometimes scrambled off the reading rug to bring [their teacher] yet another book that had intertextual links to the book that was being read” (Smolkin, 2001, p. 104).

Benefits of a Low-fat, Non-Fiction Read-Aloud

No one likes to compromise enjoyment when we consume books, and I promise, the benefits of using non-fiction books for a read-aloud are more than worth it. Here are a few of the health benefits or reading skills that develop through the non-fiction read-aloud:

©      According to Smolkin and Donovan, students can develop the following reading comprehension skills through an effective informational read-aloud:

“Finding links in and between sentences, summarizing, examining text structure, creating mental imagery and analogies, and generating hypotheses” (p. 106-109).

©      Non-fiction read-alouds are effective for introducing or supplementing content in all subject areas.

©      As students develop linguistic skills, they can practice these skills through social activities like discussions, skits, or group projects.

Bonus Recipe for Students: Cooking up Your Own Written Dishes

Ingredients:

©      3 cups of your unique experiences, feelings, and ideas

©      A generous cup of knowledge gained from literature conversations with your teacher

©      A trace of texts you have previously experienced, as Manak (2011) suggests (p. 309).

Mix all ingredients well and form into a written work of your choice, whether it is a journal entry, novel, poem, or other form of writing. Now that you have experience cooking with literature, you can use your creative freedom.

References

Coyne, M. D., McCoach, D. B., Loftus, S., Zipoli , R., & Kapp, S.. (2009). Direct Vocabulary      Instruction in Kindergarten: Teaching for Breadth versus Depth. The Elementary School         Journal, 110(1), 1–18.

Ecroyd, C. A.. (1991). Motivating Students through Reading Aloud. The English Journal, 80(6), 76–78.

EDN, Burroughs, T. R., MacDonald, B. J., Martin, D., Sims, M. C., Kaminski, D. M., … Phipps, C.. (1989). Booksearch: Stories to Be Read Aloud. The English Journal, 78(2), 87–90.            

Kipp-Newbold, R.. (2010). That's Fierce! Collaboration in the English Classroom. The English             Journal,99(5), 74–78. 

Lane, R. D.. (1998). "Keepin' it Real": Walter Dean Myers and the Promise of African-American Children's Literature. African American Review, 32(1), 125–138. 

Manak, J.. (2011). The Social Construction of Intertextuality and Literary Understanding: The     Impact of Interactive Read-Alouds on the Writing of Third Graders During Writing   Workshop. Reading Research Quarterly, 46(4), 309–311.

Silverman, R., & Crandell, J. D.. (2010). Vocabulary Practices in Prekindergarten and       Kindergarten Classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(3), 318–340.

Sipe, L. R.. (2000). The Construction of Literary Understanding by First and Second Graders in Oral Response to Picture Storybook Read-Alouds. Reading Research Quarterly, 35(2), 252–275.

Smolkin, L. B., & Donovan, C. A.. (2001). The Contexts of Comprehension: The Information      Book Read Aloud, Comprehension Acquisition, and Comprehension Instruction in a    First-Grade Classroom. The Elementary School Journal, 102(2), 97–122.