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.
