Comprehension Strategies

4. Picture Book Read-Alouds and Reading Comprehension Strategies

With an extra five minutes to spare before lunch, Maria grabbed the class’s favorite book—The Pigeon Has to Go to School! by Mo Willems (2019). It’s such a silly book, Maria thought, but the students really seem to connect with it. Especially when I act like the pigeon—and ask the class to do the same. It’s funny, she thought, Daniel and Maggie are often the most engaged during read-alouds, especially when the characters have big emotions. I wonder how I can use these to further teach and practice our SEL skills?

Book: Squanto

Page Number

2

3

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Another natural place to embed SEL learning into already-set classroom routines is during picture book read-alouds. Storybook read-alouds provide multiple benefits to classroom communities. They create a shared experience and language as a class listens and responds to a story together. Stories can provide a narrative for academic content, illustrate a concept, or simply provide a quiet time for students to become immersed in language. Yet during a busy classroom day, read-alouds can often be overlooked or under-planned for, especially in the upper elementary grades. As teachers, we tend to grab a read-aloud when there is a surprise free ten minutes in the day, or when we are building interest and background in a new concept. Well-planned, interactive readalouds increase students’ abilities to interact with the text, engage with their teacher and the concepts the book presents, and heighten deeper-level thinking (van DrutenFrietman, Strating, Denessen, & Verhoeven, 2016; see figure 4.12).

Read-Aloud Planning Template

Question

When did this story take place? In the present or the past? How do you know?

Squanto is meeting the pilgrims. Who are the pilgrims? Look at the faces in these pictures. How do you think Squanto is feeling? How do you think the pilgrims are feeling?

Focus

Identifying genre: language arts Identifying past and present: social studies

Social studies: recalling facts

Notes

Refer to the student’s timelines that were created at the beginning of the year as a reference for the vocabulary terms past, present, and future.

SEL Learning: identifying emotions

5

Page Number

6

7

Question

Have you ever met someone who dressed differently or looked differently than you? How did you feel? What did Squanto teach the pilgrims to do?

How do you think the pilgrims felt after Squanto helped them? How many different emotions can you think they may have felt?

Focus

SEL: perspective taking

Social studies: recalling fact Language arts: comprehension SEL: We feel many emotions at the same time. Emotions change over time.

Figure 4.12: Interactive read-aloud SEL planning tool.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free blank reproducible version of this figure.

Read-alouds deepen students’ understanding of social and emotional learning. Stories allow students to experience another point of view, consider new information, or develop empathy for characters (SEL building block 3: social awareness). As teachers intentionally plan their read-alouds, they can embed social-emotional lessons and examples into their planned concepts as well as their academic questions (see figure 4.12).

Read-alouds support social-emotional learning in two specific ways. First, books can be intentionally chosen to specifically teach or enhance a social-emotional concept. When the class is working on identifying emotions and using calming strategies (SEL building block 4: emotional regulation), teachers can read books like When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang (1999) to help illustrate the concept. Elephant and Piggie books, by Mo Willems, are excellent for encouraging students to identify emotions within a text. In these books, the characters become overcome with emotions that are easy to identify through the illustrations and dramatic words. By the end of the book, the characters are once again calm, providing classrooms with the opportunity to discuss how the characters used calm-down strategies before resolving their problem.

Alternatively, teachers can include social-emotional questioning into the readalouds they are using for their academic areas. If the class is learning about fractions and fair-shares, they may read The Cookie Fiasco by Dan Santat (2016). In addition to planning interactive questions to encourage the students’ problem solving and deeper-level mathematics thinking, teachers can embed social-emotional questioning here as well. In this story, four friends are panicking because they have three cookies and cannot figure out how to fairly share the cookies. While discussing the mathematics components of the story, the students can also track the characters’ emotions as the story progresses. As the class notices how the characters’ emotions change with

Notes

each event, they will be able to connect the events of the story that cause emotional responses (SEL building block component 4: emotional regulation and executive functioning). This will build heightened interest for how the characters solve the problem (in this case, using mathematics). In almost all fiction stories, the characters’ decisions and actions are driven by their emotions. Having students track these emotions and the events around them also supports students’ reading comprehension.

A critical factor of learning to read is the ability to understand the meaning behind what we read. In addition to focusing on decoding words and understanding word principles, students must be able to decode while keeping the story’s events and plot in their mind. Many reading comprehension assessments ask students to be able to independently tell what happened in a story from beginning to end. In supporting reading comprehension in fiction texts, teachers can encourage students to identify and track the characters’ emotions and how they change throughout the book. Although students can often retell a story without identifying how the characters feel, the reasons behind the characters’ actions and decisions are usually emotionally driven. Students can retell specific events if they are able to remember the characters’ emotional response that led to or resulted from the event. This also allows the students to begin to infer the reason behind the characters’ actions. If the girl missed her mother and then left the house to look for her, a student can be supported in understanding that the girl left the house because she missed her mother. This basic understanding of how emotions drive our decisions and actions is the foundation of the reading comprehension skills of inferring and identifying cause and effect, as well as understanding the emotions of the world around us.

As students read, they may jot down each time a character’s emotions change. These jots can be on a sticky note and placed anywhere in the text this occurred. After the child has finished reading, ask them to review the character’s emotional journey. Often, the character begins happy, but a conflict arises where the character’s emotions change. This change pushes the events of the story onward, until at least the character’s emotions change again for the story’s resolution. Figure 4.13 provides a graphic organizer to help students track a character’s emotional journey.

Virtual Learning Tip

When teaching in a virtual classroom, read-alouds and picture books can be used in the same manner they are used in the in-person classroom. Often, teachers can find digital copies of the picture book, making it possible for the teacher to share their screen and project the book. If a teacher is not able to access a digital copy, a hard copy will work if the teacher ensures the students can see the pictures in the book they are holding and reading aloud. The reading responses can be assigned through an interactive platform; in fact, even in an in-person classroom students will enjoy responding to books using technology such as collaborative, interactive digital platforms.