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Early literacy: The essentials
Part 2: Sharing books and asking questions

Editor’s note: This is the second of a four-part series on emergent literacy: supporting children as they learn to read and write. Part one addresses language and conversation skills. It is available online at www.childcarequarterly.com/fall05_story1.html. Part 3 will examine phonological awareness and alphabet activities; the final piece will review tools for supporting emergent reading and writing, and assessment.

You’ve been to the library and chosen a book. The children are gathered and comfortable, and you begin to read, “Little brothers can be a lot of trouble….” You’re thrilled when you glance up from the text. The children are focused, attentive, and eager. And Jeremy and Jessica, twins with a challenging younger brother, are engrossed.

You know it’s important to read aloud—often and with enthusiasm. But what’s the difference between reading a book and using quality children’s literature to promote literacy? The impact of book sharing—and the key to early literacy development—depends on how you prepare before, during, and after you read.

Four fundamentals
Lilian Katz (1988) identified four learning fundamentals for children: knowledge, skills, dispositions, and feelings. Each connects directly to a child’s experiences with literature, and a single book—like My Little Brother referenced above—can strengthen all four.
Knowledge is acquired through the senses, personal experiences, and skillful direction from a caring adult. Example: knowledge of a banana.
Skills are gained through practice—first under someone’s direction and then independently. Example: peeling a banana.
Dispositions are “habits of the mind” that can become lifelong traits like curiosity, neatness, and perseverance. Example: a banana whose peel is placed in a garbage can.
Feelings are an emotional response to an experience. Example: the enjoyment of eating a banana.
Consider how these fundamentals apply to reading. Background knowledge, the skill of decoding and understanding words, wanting to read, and feeling proud of the ability to read—these fundamentals are the hallmarks of literacy success. “Emphasizing knowledge and skills to the exclusion of dispositions and feelings results in an illiterate population” (Jalongo 2004). Similarly, emphasizing dispositions and feelings over knowledge and skill can hamper reading fluency.

Choosing books
The quality of the books you share will affect how well you bridge a book’s entertainment and educational qualities. Because more children’s picture books are published today than ever before, it can be harder to choose the best.
Be sure to include a variety of types, or genres, of books—fiction and nonfiction. Each offers unique ways to examine and learn all kinds of things. For your classroom library, include books from each of the categories listed below. The examples are traditional favorites from each genre. Don’t forget about books in translation for children whose home language is one other than English.

Board books
Dressing by Helen Oxenbury
I Make Music by Eloise Greenfield
Moo Baa La La La by Sandra Boynton
Wordless picture books
A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog by Mercer Mayer
Good Dog, Carl by Alexandra Day
Picnic by Emily Arnold McCully
Do Not Disturb by Nancy Taufuri
Fiction picture books
The Old Woman Who Named Things by Cynthia Rylant
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe by Vera Williams
Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
ABC books
On Market Street by Anita and Arnold Lobel
B Is for Bulldozer by M. Iwai
There’s a Zoo in Room 22 by Judy Sierra
Counting books
Moja Means One by Muriel and Tom Feelings
Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang
The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins
Counting Crocodiles by Judy Sierra
Biographies and autobiographies
Hattie and the Wild Waves by Barbara Cooney
My Name Is Georgia: A Portrait by Jeanette Winter
Shaka: King of the Zulus by Diane Stanley
Susana of the Alamo: A True Story by John Jakes
Concept or information books
Fire Trucks by Hope Irvin Marston
My Dentist by Anne and Harlow Rockwell
They Call Me Woolly by Keith DuQuette
The Magic School Bus series by Joanna Cole
I’ll See You When the Moon Is Full by Susi Gregg Fowler
The Best Word Book Ever by Richard Scarry
Bugs by N.W. Parker and Joan R. Wright
The Random House Children’s Encyclopedia
DK Merriam-Webster Children’s Dictionary
Rebus and recipe books
Pretend Soup by Mollie Katzen
The House That Jack Built: A Rebus Book by Elizabeth Falconer
Response and prediction books
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
Where’s Spot? by Eric Hill
Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy Shaw
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
Beginning reader picture books
Three Up a Tree by James Marshall
Frog and Toad Are Friends by Arnold Lobel
Oliver Pig at School by Jean Van Leeuwen
Traditional fantasy, fairy tales, and folk tales
American Tall Tales by Mary Osborne
Frederick’s Fables by Leo Lionni
Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe
The Mitten: A Ukranian Folktale by Jan Brett
Poetry books
Barn Dance by Bill Martin and John Archambault
A House Is a House for Me by Mary Ann Hoberman
Read-Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young by Jack Prelutsky

Sharing books
Whatever the genre, you can strengthen each of the four learning fundamentals and prepare children to be successful independent readers by following these guidelines:
Prepare for reading. Make sure you’re familiar with the book and can introduce it in a way that creates interest. Preparation will allow you to read the text while establishing eye contact with your listeners.
Practice new vocabulary—especially words in an unfamiliar language. Remember your voice is an important tool. Practice character voices, if appropriate, but avoid becoming overly dramatic. Let the book—not you—create the drama. Make sure the children can hear pleasure in your voice as you share information, a great story, or a rhyme.
Position yourself so all children can see the book and your face. They will be eager to see the pictures and watch your expressions. Typically, the teacher sits in a chair while children sit on the floor. Practice holding the book in different ways until you can steady the book and turn pages smoothly.
When the children (and you) are comfortable, show the book’s cover. If the book is new to the children, take the time for a conversation about the cover art. Share the title of the book as well as the author’s and illustrator’s names. Ask: “What does the cover tell us about what’s inside?”
Read the pictures as you go through the book. Pictures in themselves tell a story, providing a sequence of images to absorb and follow. Pictures allow children to bridge from familiar to unfamiliar objects.
Give children a purpose for listening, to help them connect what they already know to the new information in the book. One way to do this is to invite children to predict what will happen next in the book. Another way is to ask: “Do you think this book is fiction or nonfiction?” Follow up with “How can you tell?”
Make sure their background knowledge is solid enough to follow this new story. For example, a child in Texas may respond immediately to the Spanish and English of Spicy Hot Colores/Colores Picantes, but a child in Kentucky might need supportive information about iguanas and piñatas.
Define key vocabulary and provide props—samples, pictures, or recordings—if necessary. This supportive information expands children’s knowledge. According to the National Research Council, “Children who have a wide body of background knowledge and life experiences are more likely to succeed in reading” (1999).
As you read the text, stop at strategic points to ask questions, make observations, and invite conversation. Encourage observations that reflect how children feel as they listen. Does the text make them eager to learn more about skyscrapers, wrap an orange serape around their shoulders, or eat a juicy apple?
Draw children’s attention to the text. Use your finger to track text from left to right. If you are sharing a big book, use a pointer.
Invite children to fill in the blanks and tell the story with you. This technique works particularly well with a predictable story like Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain or Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See. Focus attention on refrain text by applying removable highlighting tape.
After reading, take the time to let children savor the ending. Then invite them to state their conclusions, describe new learning, test new vocabulary, or relate the story to their personal experiences.

Continue the conversation
If children are still interested, continue conversations about a book’s theme. Use the PEER sequence (described on page 6) to move children toward an expanded vocabulary and increasingly complex sentences.
Invite the children to follow the pictures in the book and retell the story in their own words. Offer art supplies and encourage reflection and new representations. Let children act out the story, retell it with flannel-board characters, or recreate it with blocks.
Find ways to connect the book to the environment. For example, after reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears, share three stuffed bears, three chairs, and three bowls. Encourage children to investigate the props and the mathematical theme in the story.
Invite children to tell, dictate, and then write their own endings to a book. Or encourage children to create a follow-up adventure for characters from a favorite book. What happens to baby bear on his first day at school, for example?
Take simple field trips or plan classroom activities that reinforce a book’s themes. For example, after reading How a House Is Built, visit a construction site. Or after sharing Bunny Cakes, plan a cooking activity. Use these experiences to invite questions, make observations, and expand vocabulary.

Asking questions
Experienced teachers know they can strengthen literacy skills by occasionally asking questions about the story’s action. The best questions are open-ended and asked at appropriate times.
Open-ended questions don’t have simple yes or no answers. Instead, they broaden cognitive, language, and social skills by encouraging children to consider the story line, descriptive vocabulary, and relationships as they respond.
Open-ended questions invite children to share their insights and reflections. For example, in Anna Dewdney’s book Llama Llama Red Pajama, you might ask questions such as these: “Why do you think baby llama had red pajamas?” “What do you do when you have to be patient?” “Tell us why you think baby llama had a stuffed friend to sleep with?”
Questions like these help children relate a book to their own experiences—home life, fears, adventures, and friendships. While few U.S. children have seen a llama, most know and can describe the ways in which the baby llama character is like themselves. Every child will want to describe bedtime rituals in their own homes—and probably share a funny story about having to wait for a parent. They know the frustration of feeling ignored and the fear of being alone. They also know the satisfaction of using new, powerful words like fret, moan, whimper, pout, weep, wail, tizzy, drama, and snuggle.
In addition to making questions open-ended, consider when to ask them. Ideally, you will stop no more than two or three times in a story. Any more than that is overly disruptive and can become tedious.
Typically, you will read a favorite book several times. If so, vary the stopping point and the questions you ask.
Asking questions enables you to evaluate and expand children’s understanding of a book. Starting Out Right (Burns 1999) describes an easy-to-remember method known as PEER. Here’s how the method works:
A Parent or other adult asks a question while sharing a book with a child. The adult then Evaluates the child’s response and Expands on what the child has said. The adult Repeats the questions, continuing to assess and extend the child’s understanding.
Consider the PEER sequence in reading Llama Llama Red Pajama.
First reading:
Adult: What is baby llama doing?
Child: Calling for his mama.
Adult: Yes, the mama is washing dishes and baby llama hums a tune while he waits for her.
Second reading:
Adult: What is baby llama doing? Do you remember what baby llama does when he’s in his bed?
Child: Baby llama calls his mama and hums a tune while he waits.
Adult: Right. Do you remember what baby llama does next?
The conversation gives you some insight into what a child knows and remembers. It also stretches the child’s memory, vocabulary, social awareness, and background knowledge.

Reading for enjoyment
In a time when many schools emphasize drills and testing, it’s easy to overlook the fourth of Katz’s fundamentals—feelings. Let us never forget that good children’s literature is to be enjoyed. Children who enjoy their early literacy experiences will be more likely to succeed in building their reading skills and knowledge.
For this reason, avoid asking questions with right/wrong answers. Keep interruptions to a minimum so the story moves along. You might occasionally call attention to the letter M, but don’t turn the story into a repetitive examination of letters and sounds.
Enjoyment, however, doesn’t come at the expense of learning. A good book can be expanded into activities that give children information about themselves and the world. A good book gives you a window into children’s knowledge, experiences, skills, feelings, and needs.

Resources
Aarmeda, Verna. 1992. Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain. New York: Penguin.
Burns, M.S., P. Griffin, and C.E. Snow (Eds.). 1999. Starting Out Right: A Guide to Promoting Children’s Reading Success. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Available online at www.nap.edu/html/sor/.
Brett, Jan. 1996. Goldilocks and the Three Bears. New York: Putnam.
Dewdney, Anna. 2005. Llama Llama Red Pajama. New York: Viking.
Gibbons, Gail. 1996. How a House Is Built. New York: Holiday House.
Jolongo, Mary R. 2004. Young Children and Picture Books, 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Katz, Lilian G. and Sylvia Chard. 2000. Engaging Children’s Minds: The Project Approach. 2nd ed. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.
McPhail, David. 2004. My Little Brother. San Diego: Harcourt.
Owocki, Gretchen. 2001. Make Way for Literacy! Teaching the Way Young Children Learn. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.
Shahan, Sherry. 2004. Spicy Hot Colors/Colores Picantes. Little Rock, Ark.: August House Little Folks.
Wells, Rosemary. 1997. Bunny Cakes. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.