Andrea Paganelli - Power Up Your Read-Alouds

Power Up Your Read-Alouds

Building Reading Excitement through Technology

Andrea Paganelli

Copyright 2019 by Andrea Paganelli

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2019009850

ISBN: 978-1-4408-6520-6 (paperback)

978-1-4408-6521-3 (ebook)

23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5

This book is also available as an eBook.

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To my amazing family with appreciation for your support, love, and chill time.

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like to say thank you to

my family,

everyone who has read to me,

all educators and librarians,

and specifically my colleagues and collaborators throughout the years.

Introduction

I wish my learners would be as excited about reading as they are about technology is a lament frequently sung by those who seek to support reading development. There is no debate that reading is fundamental and reading aloud strongly supports lifelong reading engagement. However, technology use is ubiquitous in our society, and engagement with technology is essential for our success. Reading and technology are in competition for our learners attention. How can this tug-of-war be addressed? We can combine reading and technology through the use of read-aloud.

Through the combination of technology and read-aloud, facilitators can create engaging digital read-aloud programs to enhance the learning experience. Digital read-aloud can be used with multiple age groups, in a variety of settings, and with differing degrees of expense and technology complexity.

These options can be overwhelming. To meet this challenge, Power Up Your Read-Alouds: Building Reading Excitement through Technology is a research-based compendium of information on background, implementation, evaluation, and sustainability of the technology-infused read-aloud for reading support persons, school librarians, public librarians, instructional librarians, teachers, and professors that spans multiple ages and subjects and includes practical examples designed to engage.

This book has two distinct parts. Part 1 is , is devoted to read-aloud experience examples containing resource type category, group size, age level, and subject.

This book is for any reading support person, school librarian, public librarian, instructional librarian, teacher, and/or professor who wishes to foster reading as a lifelong pursuit for their learners.

PART 1

Digital Read-Aloud: Creating the Experience

CHAPTER ONE

Reading Aloud: A Brief History and the Issues and Importance of Technology Inclusion

Reading aloud is a societal good.

Reading is a fundamental skill that will impact individuals throughout their lives. As a result, reading should begin early and persist throughout life to help ensure success (Anderson et al. 1985). Reading aloud is a shared experience that can cut across boundaries of age, race, gender, and economics to impact reading success. All come as they are to the read-aloud with equal opportunity to listen and learn. We have a shared and research-supported understanding that the read-aloud experience can positively impact myriad literacy development skills, motivation to read, and academic performance (Adams 1990; Anderson et al. 1985; Duursma, Augustyn, and Zuckerman 2008; Goldfield and Snow 1984; Keller 2012; Krashen 2004; Ross, McKechnie, and Rothbauer 2006; Trelease 2006).

A few of the early reading skills impacted are letter recognition, an understanding that print represents the spoken word, book mechanics (holding and turning pages), basic story structure, syntax, and grammar (Duursma, Augustyn, and Zuckerman 2008). Reading aloud can expose and connect learners to powerful concepts such as story elements, genres, vocabulary, authors, and illustrators. Reading aloud encourages vocabulary building. Beyond encouraging exposure to vocabulary-building text, as an added benefit, childrens books contain 50 percent more rare words than popular television (Duursma, Augustyn, and Zuckerman 2008).

As a child of the predigital era, my read-aloud experience typically consisted of an advanced reader (like a parent or librarian), literature, and participants. I loved that engagement and would stare enthralled as the stories unfolded. The experience was a foundational, fond memory of youth. At its best, the read-aloud is a performance for participants designed to pique interest and drive engagement (Keller 2012; Paganelli 2016).

When an advanced reader models literacy development through read-aloud, it can influence motivation and development in reading skill. According to Friedman, read-aloud programs that have the greatest impact share the commonality of an advanced reader to mediate the learners experience (1997). Learners who read and engage with a variety of stories have a greater likelihood of becoming lifelong readers and perform better in multiple measures (Krashen 2004; Ross, McKechnie, and Rothbauer 2006). Read-aloud is packed with positive benefits and can be the cornerstone of many growth experiences.

Reading Aloud: A Brief History

The Oral Tradition

We, as humans, seem to be drawn to the act of reading aloud. Where do the origins of this attraction begin? Storytelling could ultimately be the source, dating back to around 200,000 BCE and the birth of human speech. Storytelling is primal and found in multiple indigenous cultures that predate or coexist with drawn and written societal communication development. We find pattern and comfort in storytelling; it is an ordered way to engage and learn about our chaotic existence. The learning conveyed in early storytelling was packed with practical information that served to sustain humanity (Delistraty 2014; Kluger 2017; Mendoza 2015). The early storytelling shared daily existence, rituals, and events involving the hunt (Big Fish Presentations 2012). Verbal storytelling served the purpose of sharing information needed for human survival and entertainment. The information sharing across time was only as accurate as the storyteller.

The Symbolic Visual Tradition

The symbolic visual tradition started around 30,000 BCE as a precursor to written language and as a method to communicate an idea or message over time. Cave paintings from around 15,000 BCE found in France display excellent examples of this early form of visual storytelling. The cave-drawn images depict multiple animals, round dots, humans, and handprints. A set of Mesopotamian tablets from around 3500 BCE were found entombed in the sheltering Middle Eastern sands safe from the elements. These tablets were covered in 100 key triangular alphabetic symbols needing to be deciphered in order to attain their meaning. The tablets elusive secrets were only unlocked when approached as a story. This story ultimately became known as The Epic of Gilgamesh (Delistraty 2014). The hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt date back to around 2900 BCE and are noted as one of the first alphabetic systems known to humans (Mendoza 2015). The early forms of symbolic communication of ideas helped convey accurate messages over time but were limited in scope and precision of interpretation.