Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/read-with-me-engaging-strategies-for-picture-books/5026386/
Right now, someplace in the world, a teacher is showing a picture book to their students, a child is sitting on the lap of a caregiver, and another child is sitting on the floor searching through a stack of picture books, trying to choose what they want the teacher to read next. According to McGee and Schickendanz (2007), when teachers engage in repeated read alouds with young children, children’s understanding of the book, vocabulary, and concepts increase, as does their ability to make inferences and explanations. When young children are exposed to just one short book a day leading up to kindergarten, they enter elementary school having heard almost 300,000 more words than children who have not been read to (Logan et al., 2019).
Reading with young children is a core and beloved component of early childhood education. In this article, we will explore how teachers and home visiting staff used picture books with young children age birth through 6. We created a survey that included questions about how picture books were used and introduced to young children, whether a book had additional activities that the adult and child participated in, children’s reactions to the book, particular book titles chosen, the ...