Preschoolers Recommending Books Raquel Cuperman (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution An inquiry stance, as suggested by Marilyn Cochran-Smith, proposes that teachers critically and dynamically question their daily experience. With her suggestion in mind, I started recording and registering evidence that could show how kindergarten students can build literary understanding through simple book-talks at the beginning of each class, and I would like to share my findings with you. My workplace is an updated and modern library in a private school in Bogotá, Colombia. I am in charge of the elementary library where more than 500 children, pre-K to fourth grade, attend class weekly. During these sessions, students take part in storytelling and follow-up discussion, and they also have full access to the entire collection. Kindergarten students are free to take home two books, which must be returned the following week. Until three years ago, what students checked out had no follow-up. Obviously it was important for administrative statistics, but those loans were not followed for academic purposes. When books went home, whether they were read, shared, understood, or simply forgotten inside back packs the whole week had no relevance. However, I questioned whether or not the discussion of those books, when they were [End Page 51] brought back, could motivate and encourage literary understanding. I started a routine in which the students, during the first 10 minutes of class, would talk about the books they had borrowed and read and recommend them to their peers. It was a simple idea for fostering book discussions, and has become a beloved routine among the students. Even though the school is bilingual, these discussions and recommendations are always carried out in Spanish, which allows the children to feel at ease in their modes of expression and vocabulary. Every so often the discussions are audiotaped and transcribed, but for the most part, the students’ responses are written verbatim after the class in an evidence diary. In this column, I have transcribed all of the children’s words. Discussing books in the comfort of the library complements many educational skills that are enshrined in the elementary school curriculum, including listening, participating, taking turns, and mutual respect. Talking with peers about books allows children to clarify, restate, explain, and reflect on their answers, and thereby develop their literary understanding. This exchange can take the form of book-talks1, small group discussions, large group discussions, or a combination of any of these three methods. There are many articles and studies that address the benefits of book talks with middle and high school students (Younker, Sloan, Silver and Westover, Erikson and Aronsson), but very few propose such methods with pre-school kids (St. Michael’s Pre-school Discovery Campus, Elster). However, the proposed strategy did not take the exact form of a book-talk; it consisted of allowing the students to talk about the books they had borrowed the week before and recommend them in front of the class. Click for larger view View full resolution The presence of a school librarian during that time and the inclusion of this strategy in the library’s curriculum push the students to talk specifically about preferences, confusions, and patterns (Chambers). Other children who have read the book can help clarify these difficulties—in the process practicing respectful listening skills—and other children, along with the school librarians, are free to ask questions and provoke critical thought. In order to facilitate literary understanding, the school librarian in particular motivates and exemplifies connections to everyday life and other books. Making connections with these books is an important aspect of literary engagement; it means the books have most likely said something to the reader. Cochran-Smith distinguishes two types of intertextuality in pre-school book discussions: life-to-text and text-to-life connections.2 Book-talks provoke these two types of connections, as I will point out, and both types of intertextuality are familiar and useful to the students. At the beginning of these literary exercises, as Sloan has also noticed, the children’s most common response is narrative—a retelling of [End Page 52] what the story is about. However, time and...
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Apr 19, 2017
Jamal Km + 2
Open Access
