Reading aloud to students is a common practice among teachers of young children. While reading aloud is a research-based instructional strategy with many potential benefits, studies show that not all teachers read aloud to their students, and read-aloud use tends to decline as students age. The purpose of this study was to explore the current…

Although reading aloud to elementary students is a common practice, few studies have focused on the actual texts read, beyond considerations of fiction versus nonfiction, and few studies have included a line of inquiry exploring teachers' rationales for text selection. In this mixed-methods study, we pair a content analysis of the reported read…

This qualitative study examined kindergarten children's responses to their favorite books and their perspectives on reading at home and school. Data included observations, interviews with teachers, parents, and children, and "My Favorite Book" response sheets completed by children. Children's favorite books reflected various genres,…

This article reports findings from an email survey of 748 U.S. PreK-8 teachers. The survey invited teachers' reflections on their autonomy in selecting children's literature for classroom instruction and classroom libraries. In this descriptive study, researchers used frequency counts, cross-tabulations, and examination of text-based responses.…

This article introduces the results of a research survey that involved 443 preschool and classroom teachers. The objective of the investigation was to discover teachers' views on making picture book reading a part of the teaching process, how picture book reading was incorporated, and how a productive visual response to a picture book was…

In the United States, research on reading difficulties is predominantly carried out by scholars who project findings on L1 English reading difficulty to generalized difficulty in learning a second language (L2; e.g., Galuschka et al., 2020; Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2020; cf. Sparks, 2023). This research extrapolation creates a negative feedback…

Students with disabilities represent an increasing percentage of students in general education classrooms. Yet, in early elementary grades, they may not see themselves represented in picture books. Teachers face many challenges in this issue, including choosing and evaluating books. In this article, we provide six questions to guide teachers'…

Teachers of the d/Deaf (TODs) struggle to select appropriate storybooks for elementary-aged Deaf pre-readers who use American Sign Language (Hayes & Shaw, 1994). Hayes and Shaw (1994) created a book selection system for TODs, but their methodology was difficult to evaluate. The purpose of the present research was to create an empirically…

Read-alouds are a frequent practice in early childhood classrooms and provide great potential for developing literacy skills for young learners including vocabulary, comprehension, text structure awareness, visual literacy, and fluency. Yet, any potential benefit of read-alouds depends on how the teacher enacts a read-aloud, particularly in…

Recent study on gender representation in children's literature has focused on the representations themselves, while there is less research regarding how children talk about these depictions in texts. Our work, a qualitative study of how kindergarten-aged children discuss gender during picture book read-alouds, examined how children drew on the…

This study examined the effects of expository text read-alouds on first grade English Language Learners' listening comprehension and book choice selection. All students in the study received ELL pull out services from a certified EL teacher. Five schools participated in the study. One school, the experimental group, received expository text…

Many sixth grade students think they are telling the truth when they complain, "Reading is boring." However, they don't realize what sort of activities encompass reading. As a teacher with a few years of experience, I am finding new ways to engage reluctant readers and show them reading can take many different forms. In this essay, I…

Positively influence comprehension, vocabulary, syntax, and oral language development with read-aloud strategies. The author shares tips for making read-alouds successful.

This study aimed to examine which genres parents are reading to children and for themselves. Furthermore, it aimed to examine mothers' and fathers' shared reading strategies for different book genres in relation to children's language and literacy development. Parents shared a narrative and an expository book with their preschool-aged children.…

This study describes book reading practices occurring in early childhood special education (ECSE) classrooms in comparison to early childhood education (ECE) classrooms. Reading logs submitted by 19 ECSE teachers and 13 ECE teachers over one academic year included all books read in whole class settings; these logs were analyzed to assess the…