Accelerating Language Skills and Content Knowledge Through Shared Book Reading

Students in early childhood settings don't always get the benefits of shared book reading—a strategy proven to boost language skills and content knowledge. Prepare the next generation of teachers to make the most of shared reading with this accessible textbook, a complete guide to building vocabulary-rich science and social studies lessons and discussions around storybooks and informational texts. Field-tested with children in high-poverty school settings, this instructional approach is valuable for any young learners at risk for comprehension difficulties.

This concise book presents the authors' proven, empirically based "Project WORLD" (Words of Oral Reading and Language Development) framework for integrating shared book reading into the classroom. Offering both big-picture curriculum design principles and specific instructional strategies, this text gives teachers the know-how they need to accelerate language skills, vocabulary development, and high-priority science and social studies content knowledge for all young children. Ideal for preservice teacher education courses and in-service professional development!

GET TEACHERS READY TO:

• Use the most effective shared book reading and vocabulary practices
  
• Teach new vocabulary while introducing key science and social studies concepts
  
• Align vocabulary instruction with content standards and objectives
  
• Stimulate and expand childrena€?s oral language abilities via interactive book discussions
  
• Implement a framework tested in collaboration with Head Start and preschool teachers
  
• Choose their own books and vocabulary words to teach
  
• Design lesson plans that get results
  
• Build a strong foundation for childrena€?s future success in science and social studies
  
• Advance learning with proven teaching techniques, such as multiple exposures to words and connected concepts and strategies
  
• Successfully teach both English language learners and native English speakers
  

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: A step-by-step Shared Book Reading Instructional Unit Planner, sample vocabulary words with child-friendly definitions, real-life classroom vignettes with embedded instructional techniques and suggestions, examples of appropriate storybooks and informational texts paired by science or social studies themes, and tools to support teachers' content vocabulary instruction.

Coordinator of Education Outreach, Department of Pediatrics, Center for Academic and Reading Skills, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 7000 Fannin, Suite 2443, Houston, TX 77030. Dr. Pollard-Durodola coordinates two projects in the 5-year program study, a€?Oracy/Literacy Development in Spanish-Speaking Students,a€? funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Institute of Education Sciences. For Project III, she conducts interrater reliability checks across sites, coordinates classroom observations of students in kindergarten through second grade, and provides training to classroom observers. For Project V, she assists in the development of a supplemental, intensive proactive Spanish curriculum and intervention program and in the ongoing training and professional development for intervention implementers.