Authors Transport Readers to New, Exciting Places

On Friday, September 17, I was a substitute teacher for a Gr. 2 class of 14 students.  The reading session involved a read-aloud exercise.  I read “The Caterpillar and the Polliwog”. The children had been studying the life cycle of a butterfly, however, they had not discussed the life cycle of a polliwog, yet.  I provided some background information on polliwogs, read the title and author’s name and talked about the outdoor setting during the pre-reading stage of the reading process.  I also asked everyone to predict what would happen at the end of the story.  Although I am not able to track these students’ development in phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension on a day by day basis I could see these four components of literacy development at work (Tompkins, p. 103).  The instructions from the teacher were to read the story, highlight high frequency words, do a follow-up activity by writing specific words that describe the four stages of the butterfly’s life cycle and the polliwog’s life cycle and draw a picture to match the words.  The students continued to look at various pages of the book I had just read and asked various questions about it as I worked with each small group.

In Reading First and Beyond (Block, C. C., & Israel, S. 2005, Corwin Press),  the authors state that “Reading trade books aloud to students is one of the best methods of advancing comprehension, higher-level thinking abilities, vocabularies and an appreciation for literature” (p. 118).   Block and Israel also mentioned that during read-alouds, teachers become “face-less” for one part of the day because students figuratively befriend an author who writes stories they enjoy.   Block and Israel state that authorial friends have a closeness to students that teachers do not because the authors don’t correct students’ errors, or ask them to take risks.  Authors transport students to exciting/new places and keep students’ interest day to day when a book series or longer chapter books are introduced (p. 118).

I thought this additional insight by Block and Israel into the benefits of read –aloud stories was interesting.   This additional component adds to my understanding of how teachers help young children become excited about reading and writing, and gives recognition to authors for their contribution to the development of children’s literacy as students go through the emergent, beginning and fluent stages of literacy development.