Solutions to raise the level of teacher-student interaction in early literacy don’t have to be complicated.
Imagine a new 2nd grade teacher, eager to read aloud and discuss a book she has found. She knows from literacy research that rich discussions during read alouds support comprehension, language development, and deep learning. She chooses a few places to stop and discuss compelling or complex parts, planning open-ended questions to check for understanding and engage children in conversation. Somehow, her plan falls flat. When she asks questions, only a few children respond with one-word answers. The ideas and dialogue the teacher hoped her questions would promote do not happen. She wonders what went wrong.
Having rich discussions with children during read alouds is a challenge that Children’s Literacy Initiative, a nonprofit that collaborates with districts to support early literacy instruction, is all too familiar with. Our coaches work with teachers in the K–5 grades who know the value of purposeful talk in their read alouds but are unsure of how to improve. These teachers have usually tried the most obvious techniques for promoting student interaction: choosing engaging books, adding turn and talk opportunities, or asking open-ended questions that promote comprehension. Though these teacher moves can help, the strategies most needed to raise the level of teacher-student interaction in read alouds are both simpler and more elusive than teachers might think.
Responsiveness, or a teacher’s ability to flexibly shift and modulate questions and scaffolding in relation to children’s language and responses, makes a world of difference. Examples of responsiveness include replying to a child’s initial thinking with interest and enthusiasm, probing them to elaborate, waiting after a question to give a child time to respond, echoing and extending a child’s initial fragmentary answer to encourage them to say more, or drawing an explicit connection between two children’s responses.
Being responsive to children’s ideas, thoughts, and comments builds joint understanding and moves beyond simple forms of questioning, where there may be little real dialogue between children and one idea may not be connected to another. When we pay attention to children’s contributions during read alouds, “the talk can move away from an initiation-response-evaluation sequence toward true discussion and joint construction of meaning” (Price et al., 2016). When discussing Double Bass Blues, a picture book about a resourceful young musician named Nic who crosses the city alone with a huge double bass, a teacher might respond to one child’s observation about Nic being afraid with the following: “That is such an interesting observation. Tell me more about why you think Nic is afraid.”
The teacher could then connect that child’s response to another child’s observation about the fierce dog chasing Nic: “I wonder if what KC just added about the dog helps to give us a bigger picture of Nic’s fear. What do you think?” In doing so, the teacher deepens everyone’s understanding of both Nic’s feelings and the reason for his feelings.
We developed two practices—responsive questioning and responsive scaffolding—to help discussion feel like a natural, back-and-forth conversation between friends. Teachers honor and affirm children’s thinking by replying to their contributions with interest and then facilitate new conversation intended to extend children’s thinking about the text.
Based on questioning techniques developed by Isabelle Beck and Margaret G. McKeown, responsive questioning combines initial open questions with follow-up questions that build on children’s first tentative responses. Open questions call on children to describe and explain ideas in a text rather than simply recalling or retrieving words from the text. Open questions usually begin with “why” or “how” as opposed to “what,” inviting more than one answer, interpretation, or thought: “Why did the girl want to climb the tree?” “How did they build the boat?”
Read the full article published by ASCD for additional strategies for building discussion into read alouds.
