Instructional Interactions: Supporting Students’ Reading Development Through Interactive Read‐Alouds of Informational Texts

Abstract

Step into Ms. Jones's classroom to see how thoughtful planning and carefully chosen instructional practices foster students' collaboratively developed understandings during interactive read-alouds.What all children need, and some need more of, is models, explanations, and demonstrations of how reading is accomplished. (Allington & Cunningham, 2007, p. 54 Ms. Jones waited for students to study the cover, think about their ideas, and craft their responses. "I think it will be all about lions, like where they live, what they eat, how they hunt," Malik offered. "I think it will be about how lions are the strongest and fiercest animals in Africa," Claire added. Ms. Jones replied, Those are some great ideas about this text. Turn and tell your partner what kinds of information you think this text will include and how it might be organized. You can think about some of the things your classmates have said, or you can share different ideas.The noise level in the room quickly elevated as the students shared their thoughts with one another.After students shared their predictions about the information in the text, Ms. Jones shared a few of the comments she heard from the partners. As she repeated some of the statements, she continually pointed back to the image of the lion on the cover, demonstrating the importance of locating evidence in the text. Ms. Jones noted that most of the partners used words like ferocious and dangerous to describe lions. She then turned the text over and read the blurb about the authors on the back cover. She highlighted that the husband-and-wife team have studied lions for more than 25 years and are dedicated to conserving places and creatures. Ms. Jones focused her students' attention on that statement and asked them to think about whether or not that changed their predictions about the text. Ms. Jones shared her idea that the text was going to include facts about lions. She showed students a sticky note on which she had written "facts about lions." Ms. Jones then shared another idea about the text:Based on what I just read about the authors, I also thought that this text could be about how lions should be respected. Here is a sticky note with this idea. Which do you think is a better prediction about the main idea FEATURE ARTICLE

The Quantity and Quality of Teachers’ Self-perceptions of Read-Aloud Practices in Norwegian First Grade Classrooms

“…To lessen the gap between recommended and current practices we believe that teachers need to be scaffolded or coached in their read-aloud practice. Such scaffolding could consist of examples of how other teachers plan for inter-active read-alouds to support children's encounters with potentially difficult content, text features, or vocabulary (Cummins and Stallmeyer-Gerard 2011;McClure and Fullerton 2017).…”

Close Sentence Reading to Foster Decoding and Comprehension

“…Students are invited to share their thoughts and confusions about the excerpt at phoneme, word, and meaning levels. Asking questions about the CSR allows students to identify puzzling vocabulary, make connections to prior knowledge, and construct meaning (McClure & Fullerton, ).…”

“…Students are invited to share their thoughts and confusions about the excerpt at phoneme, word, and meaning levels. Asking questions about the CSR allows students to identify puzzling vocabulary, make connections to prior knowledge, and construct meaning (McClure & Fullerton, 2017). Sometimes students identify unexpected words as being difficult either to decode or to understand, or they struggle to express their confusions clearly.…”

Teaching Scientific Metaphors Through Informational Text Read‐Alouds

“…Notice how these visual aids make connections between prior knowledge and new information. For additional strategies for creating engaging read-alouds of informational texts, see McClure and Fullerton (2017).…”