Real-Life Reading Inquiry

For my Real-Life Reading Inquiry, I chose to explore the topic of whether a first grader would rather read chapter books with a long continuous story line or more illustrated short stories. I nanny a child in first grade, so I did all of my experimenting on him! We take turns reading to each other every night before bed time, and I wanted to see if his reading style would change between the two different types of books.

                Duncan has an extensive book collection with equal numbers of short stories and chapter books. He has a lot of the “A to Z Mystery” novel series, which he loves. I noticed by doing this assignment, however, that when he chose a chapter book from that series I was always the one that read. On nights when he wanted those books he would ask me to read to him. He enjoys reading the short stories to me and we discuss the illustrations most of the time, which he loves! I have no say in what books we read at night. That is totally up to him and this assignment opened my eyes to how a first grader feels about reading.

                Each night I asked Duncan to pick the book that he would like to read before bed. For a short period of time it was all about the mystery series chapter books. He wanted to know what was going to happen so each night I would read him a few chapters. After we finished a chapter book, he went back to picking the short illustrated stories because he knew that it was more than likely his turn to read to me. One that we read about once a week is “Today I Feel Silly” by Jamie Lee Curtis. Duncan absolutely loves reading this book aloud to me. He changes his emotion with each feeling the little girl is having from page to page. There are many other short stories that have become the “usual” with him as well and his reading skills when reading those are excellent. On the other hand however, when Duncan chose to read a chapter book to me, I could see him struggle a little bit more. In my opinion, this was because of the number of words on each page as well as the word sizing and lack of page breaks and illustrations.

                In saying all of that, I was not at all surprised that he chose the shorter stories when he wanted to read aloud to me, but the longer chapter books when he wanted me to read to him. I think the fact that the short stories were more colorful and obviously had more pictures than the chapter books, made his interest level of reading rise. Most of the short story books that Duncan has are fun, silly stories that contain tongue twisters or funny story lines. I think that they are great for him to read because they are fun. It is not a chore to read those and he genuinely enjoys reading them.

                One night I had Duncan read the chapter book to me and it was a struggle. He did not want to read that book, he told me that he “wanted to read a book with more pictures and big words”.  I noticed that his genuine interest in reading went down when I had him read a chapter to me. Yes, he still engaged in the reading and was interested in the story line and what was going to happen next, but that spark wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t very surprised by this because I can remember my mom telling me that I loved to read short stories aloud to her, but when it came to the chapter books she and my dad were the ones to read those.

                In conclusion I found that the first grader I nanny would rather read short more illustrated stories instead of chapter books. I also found that his style of reading was more fluent and he had a more positive attitude about reading with the short stories. He expressed his emotions so much more when he was into the book and I saw those emotions when he read short stories. I was not shocked by this outcome, I kind of figured that Duncan would gravitate more to the short stories. However, I believe that he should be reading more chapter books than short stories at this point. His reading level is quite high and I think that he may need to be challenged a little more. I noticed that most of his readings from school are short stories so I think that it where this stems from.

                In my future classroom I want to incorporate more activities involving chapter books so that my students can learn to like those types of books just as much as they like short illustrated story books. I think it is important to have a mix of these types of books at an early age so that they do enjoy reading the chapter books as well. I think that so many fun lessons can be taught using chapter books and even though there are not as many fun colors or pictures in them, as a teacher you can make up for that in a number of ways. I was so happy that I decided to explore this topic and it was very eye opening to me. I hope to continue to see Duncan’s interest in longer books to grow, and I hope to see him gradually shift to choosing to read chapter books aloud to me! I will definitely be able to take what I have learned to my future classroom with me.