“I talk them through it”: Teacher mediation of picturebooks with sparse verbal text during whole‐class readalouds

Abstract

Picturebook readalouds have been promoted as a rich resource for strengthening literacy development in young children and discussions of picturebooks have become a common ‐ if threatened — practice in the primary grades. One subset of the diverse body of children's literature teachers can draw from is picturebooks with sparse verbal text. Such picturebooks may place additional demands on both teacher and student during whole class readalouds, who in their responses must attend even more closely to the print that is there as well as to the illustrations and other visual features of the books. The present study explores the particular “affordances” (Gibson, 1950) of such texts and how one teacher maximizes these potentials as she orchestrates three readaloud experiences in an urban kindergarten classroom.