The reading teacher volume 65 issue 3 2011

The Reading Teacher Vol. 65 Issue 3 pp. 183–194 DOI:10.1002/TRTR.01025 © 2011 International Reading Association

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COCONSTRUCTING

MEA NING

Reading aloud to students has long been

common practice in early childhood

classrooms. Not only is being read

to highly engaging for students, but

research has demonstrated how reading aloud can

promote language and literacy development through

interaction among students and

teachers about texts. For example,

when teachers and students

discuss concepts of print while

reading, reading aloud can

enhance print awareness

(Justice, Pullen, & Pence, 2008;

Levy, Gong, Hessels, Evans,

& Jared, 2006). When they

discuss word use, students

learn new words and develop

their vocabularies (Blewitt,

Rump, Shealy, & Cook, 2009;

Hargrave & Sénéchal, 2000; Justice, 2002; Mol, Bus, &

de Jong, 2009; Silverman, 2007; Wasik & Bond, 2001).

And when they discuss elements of the story, story

comprehension improves (Dennis & Walter, 1995;

Morrow, 1985; Wiseman, 2011; Zucker, Justice, Piasta

& Kaderavek, 2010). Reading aloud clearly has many

benefits when teachers and students interact and

discuss texts.

Nevertheless, if we compare the kinds of literacy

learning that reading aloud has tended to emphasize

(i.e., print awareness, vocabulary, and story

comprehension) with the kinds of literacy practices

our changing society demands (i.e., interpretive and

critical reading), even the most effective strategies

such as those listed in the preceding paragraph

fall short. Although certainly

beneficial, very basic foci such

as print, vocabulary, and story

comprehension are not enough:

Literacy involves much more than

features of print, word meanings,

and story grammars. Although

longitudinal data make clear that

levels of literacy achievement have

not changed significantly over

time (National Center for Education

Statistics, 2009), requirements for full participation

in our society have changed, and demands for new

literacies necessitate a focus on interpretive, critical

Classroom read-alouds are a context with great potential for higher level

literacy instruction in early childhood. To reach this potential, students

require teacher support during read-alouds to construct complex meanings

from high-quality children’s literature.

Jessica L. Hoffman

Interactive Literary Discussions in Kindergarten Read-Alouds

Jessica L. Hoffman is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA; e-mail [email protected].

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COCONST RUC T I NG M E A N I NG: I N T E R AC T I V E LI T E R A RY DISC USSIONS I N K I N DE RGA RT E N R E A D-A LOU DS

The Reading Teacher Vol. 65 Issue 3 November 2011R T

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meaning construction (Coiro, Knobel,

Lankshear, & Leu, 2008).

This article presents how one

researcher and a kindergarten

teacher worked together to redesign

reading aloud as a classroom practice,

to focus on higher level literacy

practices to meet 21st century literacy

demands. I define higher level literacy practices as those focused on actively

constructing meaning through analysis,

interpretation, and critical thinking,

resulting in interpretations of text, rather

than comprehension of literal-level

content explicitly in text. For example,

recalling character names in a story

would be considered a low-level literacy

practice, because that information

is explicit, leaving little room for

interpretation. In contrast, interpreting

character motivations would be a higher

level literacy practice, because the reader

must analyze the information explicitly

in the text and synthesize it with her

own knowledge and experience to

construct meaning that is interpretive

and goes beyond the text itself.

In this article, I begin with a brief

overview of reading aloud as it is

commonly practiced, followed by a

review of studies that have successfully

infused higher level literacy practices

in early childhood instruction. Then, I

outline our collaborative design process,

our resulting instructional design for

reading aloud, and considerations for

application in other settings.

What Do Early Childhood Classroom Read-Alouds Typically Look Like?In general, early childhood classroom

read-alouds have been characterized as

common practice, and one highly valued

by teachers, but also lacking emphasis

on or substance in the discussion of texts

(Beck & McKeown, 2001; Dickinson,

2001). In a 1993 The Reading Teacher

article, Hoffman, Roser, and Battle

described the “modal,” or average,

read-aloud experience from their data

on 537 classroom observations:

The classroom teacher reads to students from a trade book for a period between 10 and 20 minutes. The chosen literature is not connected to a unit of study in the classroom. The amount of discussion related to the book takes fewer than 5 minutes, including talk before and after the reading. (p. 500)

More recently, Beck and McKeown

(2001) found that teachers tended not to

engage children in discussing major story

ideas and that the two most common

approaches to comprehension supports

were highly ineffective. Dickinson (2001)

also reported that most teachers did not

approach book reading in an “intentional

manner” (p. 201). As Teale (2003) stated

in his account of the history of reading

aloud, “[studies] converge to indicate that

the typical read aloud leaves much to be

desired” (p. 123).

What Can Classroom Read-Alouds Be?Research focused on literary

understandings (as opposed to research

on reading aloud as instructional

practice reviewed earlier) have found

that children are entirely capable of

engaging in higher level literacy practices

when their meaning making is facilitated

by teacher supports and interactive

discussion. Examples include studies

of critical literacy (Vasquez, 2010),

multiliteracies (Crafton, Brennan, &

Silvers, 2007), and literary analysis and

response (Eeds & Wells, 1989; Pantaleo,

2004a, 2004b; Sipe, 2000, 2008).

These studies of higher level literacy

instruction have two common elements:

the form of the discourse is interactive discussion, allowing for freer student

talk than is observed in a traditional

three-turn teacher initiation, student

response, teacher evaluation (IRE)

pattern (Cazden, 2001), and the focus

of discussion is on interpretive meaning,

rather than literal level comprehension.

Making It Happen in a “Typical” Kindergarten ClassroomAlthough the work of researchers

reviewed earlier is valuable in terms

Pause and Ponder ■ How do your students currently interact

with texts, the teacher, and other students

during classroom read-alouds? How might

those ways of interacting affect students’

constructions of meaning?

■ What is typically the focus of discussion

during narrative read-alouds in your

classroom? To what degree do you

currently focus on higher level literacy

instruction?

■ How could you improve the quality of your

classroom read-aloud discussion through

changes to interactions and the focus of

your instruction?

“Children are entirely capable of

engaging in higher level literacy practices

when their meaning making is facilitated by

teacher supports and interactive discussion.”



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of exploring the possibilities of young

children’s interpretative efforts, many of

these studies were limited to descriptions

of students’ responses, without

systematic analysis of the teacher talk

required to support such responses. In

addition, many only studied teachers (or

researchers) already expert in children’s

literature and literary discussion

(Pantaleo, 2004a, 2004b; Sipe, 2000,

2008), rather than investigating how such

instruction might be brought about with

teachers novice in the practice. Therefore,

this study explored how a teacher with

no experience in higher level literacy

instruction infused such practices into

her classroom read-alouds.

The teacher and I met when I

facilitated professional development

(PD) for preschool teachers in her

school. During this time, she expressed

an interest in PD specifically related to

early literacy instruction, because she

felt her schoolwide PD opportunities

failed to support her professional goals

as a kindergarten teacher. She was also

dissatisfied with the basic skills focus of

the school-adopted literacy program. To

address her professional needs and based

on previous research on higher level

literacies in read-alouds, we established

the following PD goals for the teacher’s

instruction and for students’ responses

to literature during read-alouds: (1) to

change the form of teacher and student

talk from mostly IRE to interactive discussion, and (2) to shift the focus of

discussion from mostly literal-level foci

on what is explicitly in the text to higher

level interpretative meaning.

Why Interactive Discussion?Interactive discussion is crucial to

meaning making with texts because

meaning construction is dependent

on social interaction and language

(Vygotsky, 1978). Interactive discussions

provide much-needed “meaning-space”

for children to explore tentative under-

standings (McGee, 1995 [drawing on

Corcoran, 1987]). In addition, how

teachers interact with students makes

a difference. Wells (1995) reported that

when teachers controlled talk, they tended

to guide meaning toward their own

interpretations, but when they acted as

participants in discussions with students,

meaning tended to be collaboratively

constructed. These and other researchers

(e.g., Sipe, 2008) agree that when students

are encouraged to respond freely,

meaning making profits from insights

of young children that would never have

surfaced if they were only permitted to

respond to teacher questions.

Why Interpretive Meaning Making?Comprehension of the literal

information in texts is of course

important. However, good readers do

much more than take in the literal—

they analyze meaning to identify and

pull out important pieces of information,

synthesize that meaning with their own

background knowledge and experience,

and interpret meaning from their unique

perspectives. As Rosenblatt (1978)

explained, reading is a transaction in

which meaning is negotiated by both

the text and reader. Not all readers do

this naturally, especially inexperienced

readers, but readers can be apprenticed

into interpretive approaches to text,

which can better prepare them for

higher level literacy demands. This

study focused on interpretive meaning

as literary understandings, based on

the work of Sipe (2000, 2008). Sipe’s

(2008) theory of literary understanding

of young children described five types of

literary responses:

1. Analytical—treat the text as

“an object of analysis and

interpretation” (p. 264)

2. Intertextual—relate the text to

other texts

3. Personal—connect the text to the

reader’s personal life

4. Transparent—represent intense

involvement with the narrative

world of the story (i.e., the student

is lost in the book experience)




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5. Performative—manipulate the text

(i.e., the reader brings the text into

the real world by acting out some

aspect of it).

These categories of response exemplify

a broader definition of meaning as inter-

pretation rather than only comprehension

while also illustrating the higher level

thinking inherent in the demands of

literary discussion, thus framing our

goals for types of literary response to

support in interactions with students.

Our Collaborative Design ProcessContext and ParticipantsI collaborated with a kindergarten

teacher in a charter school in a large

urban district, Ms. Maddox. Ms. Maddox

is a young African American woman,

with a bachelor’s degree in education.

She was in her eighth year of teaching

and had 5 years of experience teaching

kindergarten, all at this particular school.

Ms. Maddox had no previous experience

in higher level literacy instruction.

Her class of 22 students was

100% African American and

received free or reduced lunch. The

students lived in the charter school’s

surrounding neighborhood, which was

predominately low-income, but they

tended to have higher percentages of

working parents than students in the

neighboring public schools. All teacher

and student names are pseudonyms.

Professional DevelopmentThe teacher and I met in group PD

sessions monthly for 6 months, 1.5

hours each, each with a different focus

(e.g., interpreting literary constructs

in text, intentional questioning and

response). The teacher volunteered her

time to participate in the PD; there was

no course credit, and she still attended

all of her school-sponsored PD sessions.

As compensation, she received the

collection of children’s literature used in

the study as a permanent contribution

to her classroom library.

The goal of PD was to design

instructional supports, which are

strategic moves by a teacher (usually

through discourse) that provide

opportunities for students to engage

in new practices with high chances for

success. PD sessions were broken into

collaborative learning activities based

on the cycle of instruction: reflect,

plan, teach, assess. Prior to each PD,

we read a selection of professional

literature. At the PD session, we first

reviewed and discussed the reading

to build background knowledge to

inform our reflection. We then reflected

on our instructional design through

collaborative video and transcript

analysis of teacher instructional

supports to identify those that best

supported students’ attempts at

interpretative meaning making and

those that could be improved through

refinements. Finally, we planned revised

instructional supports for the next read-

alouds, drawing on reflections to plan

future instruction. Ms. Maddox then

taught the subsequent read-alouds and

assessed student progress informally

during the read-aloud as well as more

formally through video analysis in the

next PD.

Instructional MaterialsThe teacher read only picture books

because of their prevalence in literature

for young children, their ability to

support the decontextualized language

of the text with the visual context of the

illustrations, and their opportunities

for complex multimodal meaning

making (Sipe, 1998). Consistent with

Sipe’s definition of the picture book,

throughout this article the word text refers to the synergistic meaning

constructed through both the language

and the images of the picture book,

a literary art form composed and

interpreted as a holistic piece. I worked

closely with two internationally

recognized experts in children’s

literature to choose books on the basis

of their inclusion of the following:

■ A narrative story structure (to

support literary discussion; other

forms of text were read by the

teacher for other purposes)

■ Complex ideas worthy of discussion

■ Rich, descriptive language

“A broader definition

of meaning as

interpretation

rather than only

comprehension.”



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■ Artful incorporation of text

and illustrations that support

transmediation, in which the

meaning from the text and the

meaning from the illustrations are

interconnected in a way that results

in a sum greater than its parts

(Sipe, 1998)

■ A book length that could be read

in its entirety in 20 to 30 minutes,

including discussion

A selection of books was presented

to the teacher, from which she chose

the texts to read to her class (see

Table). All books were read aloud

to the class at least twice to allow

interpretive meaning making to

develop over repeated readings of

the text, a well-documented practice

(Dennis & Walter, 1995; Martinez &

Roser, 1985; McGee & Schickedanz,

2007).

The Resulting Design: Instructional Supports for Interactive Literary DiscussionAcross iterations of redesign through six

PD sessions, we developed four effective

instructional supports for interactive

literary discussion related to the two goals

of the study: building interactive discussion

and interpretive meaning making.

Instructional Support 1: Encouraging Student Talk to Build InteractionIn response to the goal for interactive

discussion, after beginning PD,

Ms. Maddox designed and taught

her students procedures for their

participation during read-alouds,

assuming that the transition from

requiring students to raise hands to

encouraging free participation would

be a chaotic one. She decided to allow

students to talk at will during the read-

aloud, but in a quiet voice. Then, if

the teacher initiated discussion with

a question, the students were to raise

their hands. But instead, she almost

immediately allowed students to freely

answer questions, ask questions, and

make responses at any point during

her read-alouds. This simple change

to her read-aloud routine provided the

much-needed meaning space (McGee,

1995) for children to offer and explore

interpretations of texts with their

peers, live in the meaning-making

process.

The classroom climate appeared to

already have established a clear goal

for all instruction—to participate and

learn—and therefore the transition

to interactive discussion was not a

difficult one for Ms. Maddox and her

class. There were of course times when

many students responded at once to

particularly exciting points in the text

or in divisive discussions. For example,

while reading Zinnia and Dot (Ernst,

1992), a story of two hens trying to hatch

one egg, several students repeatedly

spoke over each other to explain an

event in the story.

Dion: Ms., Ms. Maddox they

fussin’ and fightin’....

Gregory: They rivals!...

Student: They arguin’. [all talking

at same time]

Jennifer: Ms., Ms. Maddox that’s

what rivals mean!

Dion: They’re fussin’ and

fightin’.

Danny: I don’t agree.

Ms. Maddox: Well, one at a time....

So you don’t agree with

Jennifer, Danny? [many

students talking at once]...

OK, so let’s…Jennifer,

what did you say?

Table Children’s Literature Selected for This StudyBang, M. (1999). When Sophie gets angry, really, really angry. New York: Blue Sky.

Bond, F. (1985). Poinsettia and her family. New York: HarperCollins.

Bryan, A. (2003). Beautiful blackbird. New York: Atheneum.

Burton, V.L. (1969). The little house. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Cauley, L.B. (1990). Town mouse and country mouse. New York: Putnam.

Daly, N. (1999). Jamela’s dress. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

dePaola, T. (1979). Strega Nona. New York: Aladdin.

Ernst, L.C. (1992). Zinnia and Dot. New York: Viking Juvenile.

Graham, B. (2001). “Let’s get a pup!” said Kate. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick.

Hale, C. (1998). Elizabeti’s doll. New York: Lee & Low.

Havill, J. (1993). Jamaica and Brianna. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.

Henkes, K. (2004). Kitten’s first full moon. New York: HarperCollins.

Hesse, K. (1999). Come on rain! New York: Scholastic.

Hills, T. (2006). Duck and goose. New York: Schwartz & Wade.

Kasza, K. (1988). The pig’s picnic. New York: Putnam Juvenile.

Lionni, L. (1970). Fish is fish. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Pilkey, D. (1996). The paperboy. New York: Scholastic.

Pinkney, B. (1994). Max found two sticks. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Wyeth, S.D. (1998). Something beautiful. New York: Doubleday Books for Young Readers.

Young, E. (1992). Seven blind mice. New York: Philomel.




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Jennifer: That what rivals mean,

like when they want

their eggs to be like the

prettiest.... I have friends

like that.

Ms. Maddox: Uh-huh.

Jennifer: They [my friends] think

their pets is like cuter,

but they [Zinnia and Dot]

think their eggs are like

the most precious...

Ms. Maddox: Oh, OK.

Danny: They’re supposed to sit

on them. [disagreeing

with the interpretation of

the event]

When students’ simultaneous

sharing interrupted meaning making,

Ms. Maddox focused on getting back

to the significance of the ongoing

discussion, saying, as in the example

above, “Jennifer, what did you say?”

or, at other times, the quick and

effective, “Let’s get ourselves together.”

These simple management moves

communicated to students that the

purpose of free participation was

collaboration in meaning making, so

when too many speakers shared at once,

she focused on the need to hear others’

contributions, rather than on controlling

students’ ways of communicating with

strict procedures for participation (e.g.,

raising hands).

Instructional Support 2: Strategic Use of Reconstruction of MeaningIn her initial efforts to foster interactive

discussion, Ms. Maddox tended to

overly rely on encouraging student

responses by repeating and affirming

contributions, but was hesitant to build

from students’ (mis)interpretations. The

following excerpt is from Ms. Maddox’s

second reading of Seven Blind Mice

(Young, 1992), a story about blind mice

who each feel separate parts of a gray

elephant and imagine what they feel

to be different, but similarly shaped

objects (e.g., one imagines the trunk

is a green snake). Several students

expressed misconceptions about the

literal-level meaning of the book,

which still persisted after the first

reading of this book, but Ms. Maddox

only acknowledged their responses

and moved on to other students; she

searched for a “correct” answer from

the next student, without working

with students to reconstruct their

misunderstandings.

Ms. Maddox: Who can tell me what

they remember about the

book? Dion.

Dion: They [mice] turn

everything different

colors and they now

found out what it was.

Ms. Maddox: So Dion said that they

turn everything different

colors. Does anyone else

have a different answer?

What they remember

about the book? Scott.

Scott: They was going to check

out what was in the

elephant.

Ms. Maddox: What was in the

elephant? And one

more.

Scott: It was in a snake. It was a

snake.

Ms. Maddox: It was a snake? We’ll

see. Jazmyn, what do

you remember about,

something different from

what Dion said?...

In this transcript, Dion’s and Scott’s

contributions represented complete

misinterpretations, and their sharing

of them without any reconstructive

effort from the teacher only

perpetuated the misunderstanding

for the class across two readings of

this text. Although encouragement

of student ideas is important to

creating an interactive climate, relying

inappropriately on encouragement

can and did lead to unaddressed

misinterpretations.

In PD, Ms. Maddox and I explored

the issue of students’ misconceptions,

concluding that although there is much

room in literary discussion for different

but equally valid interpretations,

that does not mean that any and all

interpretations are equally valid. So

when a student’s response is clearly

misinterpreting central meaning

that is more literal and explicit, it is

detrimental to their experience of the

book to not reconstruct that meaning

with them. After this PD session early in

intervention, Ms. Maddox demonstrated

intentional efforts to reconstruct

students’ responses. For example, in

her second reading of Poinsettia and Her Family (Bond, 1985), Ms. Maddox asked

a question aimed at identifying the

motivation for Poinsettia’s action (which

“When too many speakers shared at once,

she focused on the need to hear others’

contributions, rather than on controlling

students’ ways of communicating.”



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had been presented fairly explicitly in

the story), to which a student replied

with only a description of Poinsettia’s

behavior. Instead of searching for another

response, Ms. Maddox worked with the

student through additional prompting to

reconstruct his response (in bold).

Text: She pinched a brother,

stepped on a sister...

Ms. Maddox: Why is she doing all this?

... Why do you think she

pinched her brother?

Dylan: ’Cause she was mean to

them.

Ms. Maddox: ...Yeah, she is mean for

pinching, but why, what

is the reason that you

think she pinched him?

Dylan: ’Cause he was sitting in

his favorite sister’s chair.

Ms. Maddox: Good job Dylan,... ’Cause

I can remember in the

book when he was curled

up in her favorite seat,

and Dylan just made

that connection. So, she

pinched her brother,

because her brother was

sitting in her favorite place

to read.

Here we see that Ms. Maddox did

not “fish” for a correct response from

another student, but instead prompted

Dylan with a refined question to support

him in reconstructing his understanding.

This is an example of Ms. Maddox’s

strategic use of reconstructive talk

to intentionally scaffold students’

construction of meaning in the text that

was more definite and less negotiable.

Instructional Support 3: Strategic Use of Coconstruction of MeaningTo achieve our goal of truly interpretive

meaning making, Ms. Maddox had

to move beyond reconstruction of

literal meanings with students toward

coconstruction, in which meaning was

constructed through the discussion itself.

The difference between the two forms

of discourse is perhaps best illustrated

by contrasting the preceding example

of reconstruction with the example that

follows. In this excerpt, Ms. Maddox read

Jamela’s Dress (Daly, 1999), a story of a girl

who unwittingly destroys her mother’s

brand new fabric, focusing on a page

depicting Jamela in the streets of her town,

wrapped in the material she has fashioned

like a dress, while Jamela’s dog (Taxi) is

pulling on the material with his teeth,

with a myriad of mischief surrounding her.

Notice the negotiation of meaning in bold.

James: Taxi ate it.

Ms. Maddox: Taxi, well I think it was

torn because Taxi was

what?

Dion: Pullin’ it!

Ms. Maddox: He was pulling it with

his teeth.

Gregory: He was trying to help.

He was trying to help!

Ms. Maddox: I don’t think Taxi was

trying to help. I think

with all the excitement—

Student: He was trying to pull it!

Student: He was trying to eat it.

Gregory: I think he [Taxi] was

trying to help because

the boy ran over the

material.

Ms. Maddox: Oh, that’s a good

observation!

Kia: I think he [Taxi] was

trying to take it away

from him [the boy on the

bike].

Ms. Maddox: Gregory said, maybe

Taxi was probably trying

to help Jamela save

the dress because Taxi

probably noticed that the

boy was on there so he

probably was trying to

pull it.

Students: So she... To get it out.

Ms. Maddox: To get it away from under

the bike. That’s a good

observation, Gregory. I

didn’t think of that.

In this excerpt, Ms. Maddox and the

students were discussing interpretations

of the illustration showing Taxi the dog

pulling on Jamela’s material, initially

interpreted as Taxi contributing to the

destruction of the material. However,

Gregory then initiated the idea that Taxi

was trying to help Jamela by pulling

the material away from another source

of trouble, an interpretation that was

first rejected by both the teacher and

other students, but then ultimately

taken up by multiple participants, jointly

authored by Gregory, Kia, Ms. Maddox,

and other students contributing to the




190

discussion. Even though Ms. Maddox’s

first inclination was to try to reconstruct

Gregory’s meaning to match her own

interpretation, she changed her mind,

acquiesced that control, and achieved a

truly coconstructed interpretation of text

and image with her students.

How Did She Do That? In our

analysis we identified two necessary

components for coconstruction:

capitalizing on student-initiated

responses and the use of follow-up

questioning to guide the meaning-

making process across multiple

participants’ contributions. Simply by

allowing and encouraging students to

freely respond during the read-aloud,

Ms. Maddox achieved an increase in

student-initiated responses (student

talk other than responses to a teacher

question, such as bringing up a new

idea, or responding to another’s

comment without prompting).

However, only encouraging free

response was not enough to support

coconstruction. Read-aloud discussions

with free student participation in

another teacher’s class in the larger

study demonstrated how young

students offered a series of unrelated

questions and comments at a break

in the reading of the text, which

resulted in more student-initiated talk,

but not coconstruction. To achieve

coconstructive discussion, young

students need to learn how to pursue

one topic in more extended discussion,

as in the talk in Ms. Maddox’s class.

To turn student-initiated responses

into coconstructive meaning making,

the teacher must guide students to build

on responses, and Ms. Maddox did

just that through her use of follow-up

questioning. This excerpt of a second

reading of Duck and Goose (Hills,

2006) illustrates Ms. Maddox’s use of

follow-up questioning; see next how

she paused to discuss two characters’

emotions during an argument occurring

in the story (questioning in bold):

Ms. Maddox: We said yesterday that

their faces looked like

they were kind of what?

Students: Mad.

Dion: But the yellow one [Duck]

was mad and the black

one [Goose] wasn’t.

Because, because the

black one was yelling and

the other one was not.

Ms. Maddox: So, we said that the duck

appears to be mad, but

what does Goose’s face

look like it appears to be?

Gregory: He look like he’s bored.

James: He look like he’s trying to

be sad.

Jennifer: He looks like, he’s saying

like “sorry,” but he has a

sad face.

Ms. Maddox: So he looks...kind of like

you put your head down

[demonstrating] and

say, “Sorry,” you know.

Oh, that’s a good one.

Anybody agree with

Jennifer?

James: Yes, and I do that to my

daddy sometimes. I be

like [making expression]...

Ms. Maddox: Why do you agree with

Jennifer that he looks

like he’s trying to put

his head down and say

that he’s sorry?

Steven: He didn’t mean to do it.

Ms. Maddox: He didn’t mean to do it.

Here, Ms. Maddox used a responsive

blend of questioning and prompting

for students to respond to each other,

reconstruction of student ideas, and

some simple encouragement of student

contributions. In the end, Ms. Maddox’s

questioning created an interactive

discussion that scaffolded students’

interpretive efforts and coconstructed

the meaning of the text and illustration

portraying the characters’ emotions

through the discussion of them, instead

of communicating that the meaning

resides in the book or the teacher.

Instructional Support 4: Shifting Focus From Literal to InterpretiveThe second goal for our instructional

design was to shift the focus of talk

in read-aloud discussions from literal

meaning of the text toward interpretive

meaning. To do so, Ms. Maddox and

I preread, analyzed, and planned

discussion points for the children’s

literature read-aloud to prepare to engage

students in higher level meaning making.

When she read aloud, Ms. Maddox

emphasized a few literary elements

central to each text during the read-

aloud, but she did not focus exclusively

on those preidentified elements and

instead drew on the children’s multiple

responses to the text as an authentic

part of the meaning-making process.

Therefore, they analyzed characters

and personalized, made intertextual

connections and interpreted symbolism,

resulting in complex interpretations of

texts, rather than engaging in a “lesson”

on interpreting symbolism, for example.

Once Ms. Maddox shifted toward

interpretation of texts, the class’s

discussions began to include higher level

foci as a necessary part of interpreting

quality literature. For example, when

the class read Beautiful Blackbird (Bryan,

2003), a highly symbolic text addressing

issues of race, culture, and society,

Ms. Maddox intentionally prompted

students’ thinking about the symbolic

meanings to fully appreciate the text.



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Arguably very few kindergartners are

capable of independently interpreting

abstract literary symbolism, as

evidenced after the first reading of this

text, when this class summarized it as,

“[The birds] were all different colors

at the first part, and then they want to

be black,” and “The blackbird painted

the gray bird black.” However, the

kindergartners in Ms. Maddox’s class

were very capable of participating in

scaffolded discussions of symbolism, as

in this excerpt from the second reading,

in which they discussed the meaning of

the blackbird:

Text: A long time ago, the birds

of Africa were all colors

of the rainbow...clean,

clear colors from head to

tail. Oh so pretty, pretty,

pretty!

Ms. Maddox: Remember that we said

Africa was a continent.

Do you remember that?

Do you know what the

people look like who live

in Africa?

Jennifer: They’re black like us, and

they wear this stuff on

their, they wear this hat

on their hair...

Ms. Maddox: Now, remember we said

that Blackbird was in

Africa and Jennifer said

that people in Africa

look like we do, so what

do you think Blackbird

represents?

Students: Africa. Blackbird.

Jennifer: Us.

Ms. Maddox: Yeah, he might look like

us. He might represent

who we are, OK?

Text: Birds flew in from all over.

With a flip-flop-flapping

of their wings.

Ms. Maddox: So when birds flew from

all over, if Blackbird is

from Africa, and they flew

in from all over... all these

different birds represent

people that are what?

[extended discussion in

which children state the

birds may come from

different homes (e.g.,

grass, trees), different

states (of the United

States)]

Ms. Maddox: Or different what? What

do you see? ...

Steven: Colors!

Ms. Maddox: Oh, Steven, good job!

These birds might

represent people that

are different what, Steven?

Steven: Colors.

Ms. Maddox: People that are different

colors.

This excerpt demonstrates how Ms.

Maddox engaged her kindergartners

in a level of interpretation of this

story that they would almost certainly

miss without her guidance. Although

most of the interpretive content was

modeled by Ms. Maddox, and thus this

excerpt is less coconstructive than the

previous example, Ms. Maddox clearly

made efforts to engage children in

the meaning-making process. Here,

she assumed the role of orchestrator,

rather than facilitator, in response to

her students’ needs. Although the

kindergartners in Ms. Maddox’s class

were capable of more independently

interpreting more concrete ideas,

like the interpretation of character

motivation seen in the previous excerpt,

they often struggled to contribute as

independently in discussions of more

abstract literary elements, such as

theme or symbolism. Therefore, at

times when the interpretive effort Ms.

Maddox desired seemed beyond her

students’ reach, rather than abandon

it as too complex for kindergarteners,

Ms. Maddox more heavily scaffolded

students’ meaning making. This excerpt

exemplifies Ms. Maddox’s efforts to

lead her students through a process of

thinking about symbolism, supporting

them step by step to accumulate and

piece together clues from the text, the

images, and background knowledge to

actively construct the meaning.

Putting It All Together: A Visual Model of Coconstruction and Interpretative Meaning MakingFirst of all, it is important to reiterate

that multiple forms of teacher discourse

are necessary to achieve interactive

read-aloud discussions like Ms.

Maddox’s. Teachers will need to simply

encourage student responses at times,

and responses more related to literal

meaning will require reconstructive

efforts by the teacher. But although

several forms of talk may be present

during interactive discussions, an

overall emphasis on coconstruction

appeared specifically supportive of

interpretive meaning making and, vice

versa, coconstructing meaning required

“Overall emphasis on

coconstruction

appeared specifically

supportive of

interpretive meaning

making.”




192

points to discuss that were open to

multiple interpretations.

Analyses of discourse patterns

highlighted the ways Ms. Maddox

guided coconstruction to support

student interpretive meaning making.

As depicted in the Figure, this

instructional approach is distinct from

an IRE model of discourse (Cazden,

2001) because either the student or the

teacher can initiate discussion, and

multiple participants may respond at

once and to each other. Also, in this

approach the teacher does not end the

turns with an evaluation, but rather

builds from student responses to

construct more refined meanings. In

coconstruction, the teacher analyzed

the student response(s) for clarity,

completeness, and/or depth and,

if more refined meaning could be

constructed, prompted the students

with a question or comment. Thus

she contributed to the process, but

supported students to coconstruct more

developed interpretations. This cycle

could occur over and over, as observed

in long discussions comprising dozens

of contributions in Ms. Maddox’s

read-alouds. The cycle ended when

either the meaning constructed was

clear and complete enough that the

teacher acknowledged or praised the

work, or the meaning was constructed

over so many contributions that she

felt compelled to summarize the

coconstructed product for students.

Obviously live discourse interactions

are more complex than the simplified

model illustrated here; however, this

model proved effective for Ms. Maddox

in guiding her overall approach

to responses to students during

interactive discussion to create a more

coconstructive environment.

About the Texts You ReadWhen we consider reading aloud an

instructional strategy to support higher

level literacy development, the text

matters. To have the opportunity for

complex meaning making, we must read

a text that warrants and demands deep

levels of processing. Generally speaking,

if the text comprises mostly literal,

predictable content readily understood

by students with little room for multiple

interpretations, it will not be strong

enough to drive meaningful interpretive

discussion. When choosing narrative

literature such as that used in this study,

teachers should look for texts with

complex ideas worthy of discussion, well

developed characters, rich and complex

language use, and artful integration

of visuals, as described previously (see

Table).

Extending the Read-Aloud and DiscussionAs Ms. Maddox infused interactive

discussion and interpretive meaning

making in her read-alouds, we observed

two related changes. First, her read-

aloud sessions grew longer, from

approximately 23 to 30 minutes. Second,

lengths of discussions within the

read-aloud also expanded (increased

45%). It appeared that coconstructing

interpretive meaning may simply take

more time than supporting literal

understandings of the text, requiring

longer discussions of each response to

Co-construction Discourse Pattern

IRE (Initiation-Response-Evaluation) Discourse Pattern

Teacherencouragementor summary ofco-construction

StudentResponse(s)

Teacher follow-upquestion

Fully developedresponse?

NoNo

YesYes

Teacher Questionor Response

Student-initiatedIdea

OR

StudentResponse

TeacherEvaluation

Teacher Question

Figure Models of Discourse Patterns of Read-Aloud Discussions

“Coconstructing interpretive meaning

may simply take more time than supporting

literal understandings of the text, requiring

longer discussions of each response to fully

construct meaning.”



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fully construct meaning and resulting in

longer read-aloud sessions overall.

Cultural ConsiderationsInterpretation and discourse are both

related to culture, and so it is important

to recognize the role culture plays in

students’ interpretation and discussion.

In Ms. Maddox’s class, for example, she

shared aspects of cultural identity and

primary discourse with her students

because they were all African American.

Ms. Maddox may have benefited from

some shared cultural perspectives in

interpreting student responses, but that

is not to say that a teacher must share a

cultural identity with students to engage

in interpretive interactive discussions.

What is necessary (and what Ms.

Maddox demonstrated) is for teachers

to strive to understand students’ unique

perspectives, be open to interpretations

other than their own, and free students

from expectations that they communicate

in a particular discourse in their

interpretive and interactive efforts. The

more open, accepting, and encouraging

the teacher can be of ideas and ways

of expressing them, the freer students

will feel to offer insights, and the richer

coconstructed interpretations will be.

SummaryIn this age of digital and multiliteracies,

there are increasing demands for

interpretive critical thinking in

interactions with texts (of all kinds).

We can begin to foster these higher

level literacy practices with children in

instruction, and one authentic context is

the classroom read-aloud. Through our

work across 1 year with a kindergarten

class, we redesigned instruction for the

classroom read-aloud to incorporate

more interactive discussion focused on

interpretive meaning and demonstrated

the possibility for higher level literacy

instruction with a teacher who had

never shared literature in this way.

We found that instructional supports

aimed at coconstructing meaning

with students that supported their

meaning making through questioning

best supported interpretive meaning

making. Coconstructed responses to

literature resulted in much higher level

interpretations of text during read-

alouds. Through this process, teachers

and students can shift understandings of

“meaning” from something preexisting

in texts to something constructed

through texts, themselves, and others.

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To begin coconstructive interpretive discussions

during read-alouds, follow these steps:

1. Choose high-quality children’s literature,

complex enough to warrant discussion.

2. Preread books before reading with

students, so you have some ideas of points

that will support deep discussion.

3. Redesign read-aloud routines to encourage

free student participation throughout the reading,

instead of relying and enforcing hand raising.

4. Plan for and support the extra time

needed during the read-aloud to discuss

the text (including illustrations).

5. Guide students’ meaning-making efforts to

respond to the text, to you, and to each other to

more deeply pursue one topic for longer lengths

of time, rather than allowing several disconnected

contributions during breaks for discussion.

6. Focus on truly interpretive points in the

text—those that are open to multiple valid

interpretations from differing perspectives.

7. Enjoy the process! Teachers who truly

marvel at children’s meaning making more

effectively create classroom environments

that value and support coconstruction.

TA K E AC T ION!




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LI T ER AT U RE C I T ED

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ReadWriteThink.org Lesson Plan ■ “Text Talk: Julius, the Baby of the World” by

Sarah Dennis-Shaw

IRA Books ■ Developing Essential Literacy Skills: A Continuum

of Lessons for Grades K–3 by Robin Cohen ■ Essential Readings on Early Literacy edited by

Dorothy S. Strickland ■ Read, Write, Play, Learn: Literacy Instruction in

Today’s Kindergarten by Lori Jamison Rog

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Kaderavek, The Reading Teacher, May 2010 ■ “Vocabulary Development During Read-Alouds:

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Reading Teacher, November 2009

MOR E TO E X PLOR E
