Adult Behaviors While Reading

It is within this verbal exchange that the dyad (parent and child) engages in its most significant negotiations: negotiating the meaning of the story. Obviously the adult’s understanding exceeds the child’s understanding of the text. Through scaffolding, the adult gently moves the child toward the adult’s understanding of the text. That is, the adult questions the child about the text’s meaning. The child replies, and this reply gives the adult a cue. Based on the child’s response, the adult adjusts the kind of support (the scaffold) provided. To aid the child’s construction of the meaning, the adult behaves in three ways: (1) as a co-respondent who shares experiences and relates the reading to personal experiences, (2) as an informer who provides information, and (3) as a monitor who questions and sets expectations for the reading session (Roser & Martinez, 1985).

Adults play these roles differently depending on the child’s response and age.

• With a baby or toddler (twelve months or younger), the adult tends to do most of the talking. Mostly adults label the pictures. “Look, Licky, a train! Yup, that’s a train—choo, choo!” Typically adults point as they label.
• Between the ages of twelve and fifteen months, adults tend to ask the child rhetorical questions (e.g., DeLoache, 1984): “And that’s a kite. Isn’t that a kite, Josh?” The questions function to reinforce the picture’s label; the adult does not really expect the child to answer. The adult’s playing of both roles, asking the question and giving the answer, provides the toddler with experience in the question–answer cycle before the child is required to participate verbally in the exchange.
• Beginning around fifteen months, the adult’s expectations shift, and the child is expected to be a more active participant in the story reading. As the child acquires more facility with language, the adult expects the child to answer more of the questions posed. First, the adult asks the child to provide the label for the picture. The adult says things like “Look!” or “What’s that?” or “It’s a what?” If the child hesitates, the adult intervenes and provides the answer. When the child seems to be correct (Joseph says, “Pithee” in response to his father’s query), the adult typically repeats the label or positively reinforces the toddler’s response (Joseph’s father says, “Yeah. These are peaches.”). When the child shows competence at this task, the adult ups the ante, requesting perhaps a description, like asking for information about the color.

Researchers have discovered that this story-reading sequence (adult question, child response, adult feedback) is just like the typical interaction sequence between teacher and student in many classrooms (Mehan, 1979). Hence, these story readings also begin children’s socialization into the response pattern typical of many classrooms.

Researchers like Marilyn Cochran-Smith (1984) and Denny Taylor and Dorothy Strickland (1986) discovered that adults from all socioeconomic levels do the same thing when they introduce a child to a new concept in a book. They try to make the concept meaningful for the child by linking the text to the child’s personal experiences. For example, Ann Mowery (1993, p. 46) describes how, when young Joseph and his father read Wish for a Fish, Joseph’s father made numerous text-to-life connections: “That sure looks like where we go, doesn’t it?” “See, that’s a can of worms just like what we fish with.” “That’s a bobber just like ours.” “That boy is waiting quietly for a fish. You usually play with the worms and throw rocks, don’t you?”

When children approach about three years of age, adult story readers tend to increase the complexity of the questions. Now they question the child about the characters and the story’s meaning—and they expect the child to raise questions about the characters and the story’s meaning. It is this talk surrounding the reading that researchers judge to be the most valuable aspect of the storybook-reading activity for enhancing children’s language development. David Dickinson and Miriam Smith’s (1994) and Bill Teale and Miriam Martinez’s (1996) careful analyses of the teacher/student book-reading interactions suggest that the best talk is the kind that invites children to reflect on the story content or language. The focus of teacher/student talk is: What are the important ideas in this story?