Reading Aloud and Third-Graders' Writing

Research

Question: What do third-graders learn about writing from teachers’ read-alouds of children’s literature?

Answer: The authors become “mentors” for the children. They  absorb the structure of the book and the learning is enhanced by judicious questioning by the teacher.

Comment: My wife, a first-grade teacher, used to provide paperback books for the children to write in by folding several pages length-wise and stapling them. The children, writing the books, used their own experiences, wrote text on one-half of each page and drew pictures on the other half. They wrote in pencil and my wife took the time with each finished book to have them correct the spelling. The results were amazing. The children wrote and published their own books, “mentored” by the authors of children’s books she had read to them. She encouraged this writing in the 1980s. RayS.

 Title: “The Social Construction of Intertextuality and Literary Understanding: The Impact of Interactive Read-alouds on the Writing of Third-Graders During Writing Workshop.” J Manak. Reading Research Quarterly (October/November/December 2011), pp. 309-311.