PAM KASTNER: Good afternoon, and welcome to Developing Oral Language Skills within the Classroom K-3. I'm Pam Kastner from PaTTAN Harrisburg, and joining me today is -- JILL DETWILLER: Jill Detwiller.
PAM KASTNER: This webinar is a follow-up webinar to our trainings that were held at the three PaTTAN sites on oral language. Today, our focus will be dialogic reading. The mission of the Pennsylvania
Training and Technical Assistance Network is to support the efforts and initiatives of the Bureau of Special Education and to build the capacity of local educational agencies to serve students who
receive special education services. This is the goal of PDE's commitment to least restrictive environment. Our focus today will be providing an overview of dialogic reading as an evidence-based
reading technique for increasing children's vocabularies and oral language skills. Proficiency in oral language provides children with a vital tool for thought. Without fluent and structured oral
language, children will find it very difficult to think. How does a rich vocabulary develop? Through intellectually challenging conversation, using a varied vocabulary from which curriculum in school
with frequent exposure to robust words; and dialogic reading, which we'll focus on today, in school, which is the objective of this webinar; and from repeated readings of books at home and school. As
you can see from the research on this slide, this is an extensive research to support the connection between oral language, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. Oral language is the first line of
defense. As Andy B. Miller noted in the American Educator in the spring of 2003. If we are to increase children's ability to profit from education, we will have to enrich their oral language
development during the early years of schooling. In this video clip you are about to see, Dr. Rebecca Silverman discusses how books build strong vocabulary. [VIDEO BEGINS] DR. REBECCA SILVERMAN: Books
offer a great opportunity for kids to hear, to read interesting words that are more sophisticated than they might hear in their everyday life. So whereas a parent might use words like talk or speak in
their everyday conversation with kids, books might have words like communicate, discuss, that are a little bit more advanced. And children have the opportunity to experience these words in rich
contexts in books. Books have beautiful illustrations, wonderful content that really bring those words to life and allow children to learn words that are interesting and fun. [VIDEO END] PAM KASTNER:
What is dialogic reading? It's a systemic way to engage children in conversation about a storybook to build their children's language and vocabulary. The focus word there is systematic. The teacher
works with a small group of children at a time so that each child can see the pictures in the book and the teacher can engage in discourse with each child. Because the goal is to maximize oral
language, each child should have the opportunity to talk. In dialogic reading, the adult or teacher helps the child become the teller of the story. The adult or teacher becomes the listener, the
questioner, the audience for the child. Just as no one can learn to play the piano by just listening to someone else play, likewise no one can learn to read just by listening to someone else read.
Children learn most from books when they are actively involved. Why dialogic reading? Dialogic reading was found to have positive effects on oral language. Established in 2002, the What Works
Clearinghouse is a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education. An initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, the WWC produces
user-friendly practice guides for educators that address instructional challenges with research-based recommendations for schools and classrooms. WWC assesses the rigor of research evidence on the
effectiveness of interventions, programs, products, practices, and policies, giving educators the tools to make informed decisions. Four studies of dialogic reading met the What Works Clearinghouse
evidence standards and found that reading dialogically has positive effects on oral language. Dialogic reading works. From the research of Dr. Russ Whitehurst, we know that children who have been read
to dialogically are substantially ahead of children who have been read to traditionally on tests of language development. Children can jump as much as several months in just a few weeks of dialogic
reading. Over a third of the children in the United States enter the school unprepared to learn. They lack the vocabulary, sentence structure, and other basic skills that are required to do well in
school. Children who start behind generally stay behind. They drop out, they turn off. Their lives are at risk. Children's experience with books play an important role. Many children enter school with
thousands of hours of experience with books. Their homes contain hundreds of picture books. They see their parents and brothers and sisters reading for pleasure. Other children enter school with fewer
than 25 hours of shared book reading. There are few, if any, children's books in their home. Their parents and siblings aren't readers. Picture book reading provides children with many skills that are
necessary for school: vocabulary, sound structure, the meaning of print, the structure of stories and language, sustained attention, and the pleasure of learning, and on and on and on. In this
eight-minute video clip from Doing What Works website, Dr. Christopher Lonigan, the associate director for the Florida Center for Reading Research, discusses dialogic reading, its importance to
children's learning, its key features, the questioning techniques used in dialogic reading, lesson planning, and teacher support. [VIDEO BEGINS] DR. CHRISTOPHER LONIGAN: The typical reading you see in
early childhood settings are where maybe the whole class is sitting around at circle time, and the teacher is just reading a book and the children are listening. In dialogic reading, what happens is
that the typical role between the adult and the child, or the teacher and the children, is shifted. So rather than just the children being passive listeners to the story, the teacher or the adult is
having the children help tell part of the story. And if the teacher or the adult facilitates that by having the children answer some questions or provide additional expansions on things they've heard,
or maybe even remembering other things they did that actually relate to the story. So one is very -- dialogic reading is interactive in the sense that the teacher is having a dialogue with children
about the story, or using the book as a way to have the dialogue. Whereas in regular shared reading, the teacher is just reading and the children are listening. So it's a very passive, kind of
receptive model of the book. Now there's another type of shared reading which some people call interactive shared reading, where teachers may occasionally ask questions of children about the story
they're reading, but it's not as organized, it's not as systematic as it would be in dialogic reading. And the focus of dialogic reading is really less about the book and it's really more about having
a language interaction around the book. Unlike the typical shared reading, where you may be reading a book or a big book with a large group of maybe 15 or 20 children, in dialogic reading you really
want smaller groups of children. You want maybe three or five children so that children -- each child gets a chance to actively participate in the interaction. The main unique feature about dialogic
reading is that it's really not about reading. It's really about having the conversation. So there are lots of different ways you can think about it. One of the ways that I like to think about it is
that there are different levels of dialogic reading. So anybody who has ever read a book with a young child knows that children like to be read the same book over and over again. They get favorite
books and oftentimes they'll bring that book to you continuously to read over. So children are getting more and more familiar with books the more times that the book is read to them. And dialogic
reading takes advantage of that in the sense that, as children learn more about the book or have more conversations about the book, they're developing a vocabulary and a way of talking about the book.
So the first phase of dialogic reading is really just these simple WH- type questions. What is this? What's it called? What's it made of? What is he doing? So it's about the big things in the
pictures, the big actions in the pictures. And then what we like to do is have adults or teachers follow up correct answers with follow-up questions. So like I said, if the child answers that it's a
bicycle, maybe asking about parts of the bicycle, like the pedals or the wheels or the handlebar. In the second phase, or what I like to call level two, it's moving a little bit beyond the vocabulary.
So the first phase in a book is really using level one, where the teacher or the adult is making sure that the child knows the words of the things that are pictured in the book. And in the second
phase, it's using that language in a way to really tell the story. So the types of questions changes from the simple WH- type question to a more open-ended question, like maybe turning to a page and
just letting a child pick something to talk about. You know, what do you see here, the adult or the teacher may ask. Or, tell me about this page. Or, what's happening? So it really doesn't specify
that you have to talk about the bicycle or anything like that, so it really gives the child ownership of what it is that they're going to tell about the book or what they're going to tell about the
story. And then in the final phase of dialogic reading is a phase where maybe teachers will connect what's going on in the book, either the things in the book or something about the story, to
something in the child's own life, or maybe connecting the end part of the book with the beginning part of the book. So really building up a narrative about the book. So asking questions like, well,
do you remember what happened at the beginning of the story? And why is he doing this? So that has the child talking about the story, but talking about it sort of distant from the page of the book
you're on right now. Or, say, maybe the book is about going to the zoo or seeing different animals at the zoo. And maybe the class had done a field trip to the zoo or they had done some other activity
about zoo animals. So maybe the teacher would ask a question that related that experience or that field trip to what's going on in the story. Do you remember when we went to the zoo? And what was that
like? And which animals did you see? We picked this book, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, because it had good pictures for level one and level two. You know, so on this page, we're [inaudible] where it had the
picture of the mop and the pail, the level one question might be, what's this a picture of? It's a pail. What color is it? It's yellow. What do you use a pail for? To carry water or to wash things. On
level two, you might turn to this page and say, well, what's going on here? What do you see here? And the child who has already gone through level one would say, I see a pail. And the teacher might
say, I see a yellow pail. What else do you see, the teacher would ask. And the child might say, there's a mop there. And the teacher's like, yeah, there's a mop and a pail of water. And then moving on
to level three, the teacher might ask the child something that follows up on that sort of conversation. So you use a mop and a pail to clean things. You know, have you ever cleaned things or does your
-- who uses a mop at home at your house? Level three type question is something that extends beyond the pages of the book to something in a child's own life. Or, do you remember yesterday when it
rained outside and the rain came in through the window, and the man had to come in with a mop and a pail? What was he doing with the mop and the pail? And what we know from the research is that when
children are exposed to shared reading using dialogic reading, that they really do acquire greater levels of development in their vocabulary and other aspects of language. So not only is it designed
to produce language, but there's a number of research studies that actually demonstrate that children who are exposed to shared reading with dialogic reading gain more vocabulary skills and other
language skills than children who don't get exposed to dialogic reading. And the interesting thing there is that most of the studies had the children who didn't get dialogic reading is they got as
much shared reading as the children who got dialogic reading. So it wasn't a difference in being exposed to storybooks. It was a difference in how they were exposed to storybooks. The idea is that
there are different purposes for books. So understanding that doing dialogic reading doesn't mean that you're not going to do times -- have times where you just actually read a book with children. You
might even read a book just where you're the one who's reading and children are listening during small group time or during large group time or during circle time. But dialogic reading is a special
time. It's a special time to help children learn vocabulary and learn other language skills. Dialogic reading is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be fun for the children. It's supposed to be fun
for the teacher. So turn-taking and using different books and using them differently, sometimes using them for whole group, sometimes for dialogic reading, sometimes you just read, seeing that that
process is okay. Dialogic reading is flexible enough that it shouldn't be seen as something other than fun, a fun way to use books and have conversation. [VIDEO ENDS] JILL DETWILLER: Okay, we're going
to look at a three-level framework for dialogic reading, which was developed by Doing What Works website. It's a guide to help teachers build up children's vocabulary and oral language skills. It's
important that the teacher select a book rich and varied in detailed pictures. It's good to use books with predictable, repetitive patterns and large print with limited words per page. The book needs
to be revisited many times in the reading process. With each reading of the book, the children do more of the talking. On the first reading, the children label objects and later progress to what is
happening in the pictures. Eventually, after many readings, the children retell parts of the story and describe the plot. We're going to go in-depth with these levels and provide some demonstrations
of what dialogic reading would look like at each level. In level one, the purpose is to get the child talking using the vocabulary of the book to comment on the pictures. So the main focus at level
one is vocabulary. Level two, the purpose is to get children talking more and using longer phrases, so using expansion techniques and prompting descriptions. And at level three, we want to build oral
fluency so they're encouraged to use the vocabulary of the book to retell through conversation and encourage them to increase their ability as storytellers. So the purpose of level one, as we said, is
to get children talking using that vocabulary of the book to comment on the pictures. The goal is to establish labels for objects and actions, and to elicit details about the pictures. Because all
children should have the opportunity to use the new words, the group should ask -- the teacher should ask the group to repeat responses. Once again, it's important to remember that these type of
interactions should be done in small groups, not large groups. In summary one -- or in summary, at level one, teachers should be asking WH- questions, so your who, what, where, when, why, and what to
assess children's vocabulary. And also to take advantage of children's interest in pictures to follow up with questions about details. It's important to repeat what a child says and offer brief
expansions at this point and ask children to repeat your response. Make sure to praise and encourage all attempts at language at this phase. Okay, we're going to show a brief video of a six-year-old
child doing dialogic reading. PAM KASTNER: At level one. And as noted in the slides earlier, it's very important that you have a systematic approach to dialogic reading. It's important for the teacher
to preview the book in advance, to really look at the story vocabulary as well as any new vocabulary that might provide a barrier to students, and think intentionally about how they will support those
new vocabulary words through the reading. So we're going to show you the clip right now. [VIDEO BEGINS] TEACHER: What is this? STUDENT: An animal. TEACHER: That's right, it's an animal. It's called a
sheep. Can you say sheep? STUDENT: Sheep. TEACHER: Where are the sheep? STUDENT: In the mud. TEACHER: Yeah, they're in the mud. Good. The sheep are in the mud. What is this thing called? STUDENT: A
truck. TEACHER: Very good, it is a kind of a truck. It's a special truck called a jeep. See how the top is open? STUDENT: Yeah. TEACHER: Okay, what is this? STUDENT: Tire. TEACHER: You're right, it is
a tire. Sometimes we call it a wheel. What shape is that wheel? STUDENT: Round. TEACHER: Good, the wheel is round. Can you say the wheel is round? STUDENT: The wheel is round. TEACHER: Good. Is that
wheel moving? STUDENT: No. TEACHER: Oh no, it's not moving. The jeep is stuck. What are the sheep doing? STUDENT: Pulling. TEACHER: Very good, they're pulling. The sheep are tugging on a rope to get
the jeep out of the mud. What is this thing called? STUDENT: A steering wheel. TEACHER: Very good. That's a big word. It is a steering wheel. It's a special wheel. Show me what you do with a steering
wheel. STUDENT: You steer the jeep. TEACHER: Can you show me with your hands what you would do? Yeah, good. You turn the steering wheel. You use it to drive the jeep. Good job. [VIDEO ENDS] JILL
DETWILLER: Okay, so at level two of dialogic reading, the teacher is going to ask more open-ended questions and respond with brief expansions to fill in relevant information. The teacher's expansions
should be short and simple, and the child should also be encouraged to repeat the adult expansion to have some practice with it. So open-ended questions would be things like, what is happening in this
picture? What else do you see? Can you tell me more? The teacher will continue with level one and two questions, interchanging them in comments for many of the readings of the book. Typically,
alternating levels to build vocabulary and encourage new word use is recommended. For example, a teacher might ask a WH- question for a child who isn't quite ready for an open-ended question and use
open-ended questions for children they feel can answer that way. PAM KASTNER: This level two scenario from the Doing What Works website, Jill and I are going to role play teacher and child so you can
get an audio of that. I'll be the teacher and Jill is going to be a child for this. Okay, we'll be using again the book Sheep in a Jeep even though we don't have the book here to show you, but we'll
be using that as the example. What's happening in this picture? JILL DETWILLER: They're rolling. PAM KASTNER: Yes, the sheep are rolling down a steep hill. Everyone say, the sheep are rolling down a
steep hill. JILL DETWILLER: The sheep are rolling down a steep hill. PAM KASTNER: What else can you tell me about the sheep? JILL DETWILLER: One's stuck. PAM KASTNER: Very good! One's stuck. He's
stuck upside down. Tell me more. JILL DETWILLER: It went splash. PAM KASTNER: Yes, the sheep splashed in the mud. JILL DETWILLER: Splash in gooey mud. PAM KASTNER: Yes, he splashed in the gooey mud.
JILL DETWILLER: It can't get out. PAM KASTNER: Right, he can't get out. The sheep is stuck in the mud. What about the jeep? JILL DETWILLER: They pushed it down. PAM KASTNER: You're right, the sheep
pushed the jeep and it rolled down the hill. Now what? JILL DETWILLER: Jeep rolled down the hill. Stuck. PAM KASTNER: That's right, the jeep is stuck deep in the mud. What else do you see in this
picture? JILL DETWILLER: Frog. PAM KASTNER: Yes, I see a frog on the jeep. Tell me about the frog. JILL DETWILLER: It's green. PAM KASTNER: Oh, you're right. What's he doing? JILL DETWILLER: It's
scared to fall. PAM KASTNER: Good. You are really looking carefully at the pictures. The sheep didn't watch where they were going. JILL DETWILLER: They crashed the jeep. PAM KASTNER: What do you mean
crash? JILL DETWILLER: The jeep is broken and won't go. PAM KASTNER: Yes, it's broken and won't work. It needs to be repaired. Anything else? JILL DETWILLER: They need to push it. It's too stuck. They
need a tow truck. PAM KASTNER: The sheep have almost rolled to the bottom of the hill. Let's turn the page and find out what happens next to the sheep in the jeep. In this example, you can see how the
teacher used the vocabulary she selected before to extend the language of the students, as well as having the students repeat to extend their oral language. JILL DETWILLER: Okay, so now we're going to
move onto level three. At level three, the teacher questions only when children are very familiar with the book. So at this point, you should be less about questioning and more about having children
retell the story using the vocabulary. So therefore less focus on the pictures and more on the plot, and then helping them to extend their retell to dialogue and information that comes from their own
personal life. Extensions might involve making connections between parts of the story and talking about personal experiences such as, has your family ever gotten stuck? So at level three, you want to
ask recall connection -- recall questions to make connections between parts of the book. Ask distancing questions to connect the story to the children's personal experiences. Ask the child to act out
parts of the story and use the various questions types we talked about before to build vocabulary, expand responses, and encourage children to retell in their own words. PAM KASTNER: In this scaffold
example from the Doing What Works website, you can see the level three questions that are offered for your review. They focus on recall, distancing so the students make connections to the real world
about what they've just read, and possibly acting out or demonstrating parts of the story. Looking at the beginning, the middle, the end, the sequence, and the literary elements of the story. Okay,
Jill and I are going to act out the level three example for you. So do you want to be the teacher this time? You be the teacher. JILL DETWILLER: Okay, I'll be the teacher this time. Okay, Pam, what
happened to the jeep in this picture? PAM KASTNER: It crashed. JILL DETWILLER: Tell me more. What are the sheep doing? PAM KASTNER: They're cleaning up. JILL DETWILLER: Yes, they're cleaning up jeep
parts. What is this sheep doing? PAM KASTNER: Carrying something. JILL DETWILLER: Good. What's it carrying? PAM KASTNER: A tire. JILL DETWILLER: Yes, he's carrying a tire on his head. The tire came
off the wheel. What are the other sheep doing? PAM KASTNER: He's doing this. JILL DETWILLER: Right, he's sweeping with a broom. Tell me more about the other sheep. What is this part called? What is it
used for? PAM KASTNER: The teacher might ask questions similar to the following. What did the sheep do with the jeep parts? What will happen next? Do you remember why the sheep put a for sale sign on
the tree? Have you ever seen a for sale sign? Why did the jeep crash into the tree and end up in a heap? What happened at the end of the story? Was the jeep still in a heap? JILL DETWILLER: So for the
levels in summary, question -- or level one is questions that encourage children to label objects or pictures. Level two should be more open-ended questions to help children talk more about what's
going on in the story, relying less upon the teacher. And level three, questions asking children to make connections with the story plot and to their personal experiences. And provide them
opportunities to retell in their own words. Once children are familiar with the story, it's important to use the framework flexibly, alternating between levels as needed to individualize and build
oral language skills. Most importantly, remember to have fun with this. The fundamental reading technique in dialogic reading developed by the Stony Brook Reading and Language Project is the PEER
sequence. This is a short interaction between a child and an adult. Let's look at the critical components of this reading technique. PEER stands for P as prompt. Prompt your child with a question
about the story. Prompting your child focuses attention, engages the child in the story, and helps the child understand the book. For example, point to something, a picture in the book, for example a
balloon and say, what is that? E stands for evaluate your child's response. That's right, that's a balloon. The other E stands for expand on what your child said. That's a big, red balloon. We saw one
of those in the grocery store yesterday. R, repeat, or revisit the prompt you started with, encouraging your child to use the new information you provided. Can you say big, red balloon? Each time the
book is reread, the expanded vocabulary words are verbalized again. There are five types of prompts that are used in dialogic reading to begin PEER sequences. You can remember these prompts with the
word CROWD. C in crowd stands for completion prompts. This is when you leave a blank at the end of a sentence and get the child to fill it in. These are typically used in books with rhymes or book
with repetition. For example, you might say, I think I'd be a glossy cat, a little plump, but not too? Fat. Letting the child fill in the blank with the word fat. Completion prompts provide children
with information about structure of language that's critical to later reading. Recall prompts are questions about what happened in a book a child has already read. Recall prompts work for nearly
everything except for alphabet books. For example, you might say, can you tell me what happened to the little blue engine in this story? These type of prompts help children in understanding the story
plot and in describing sequences of events. Recall prompts can be used not only at the end of a book, but also at the beginning, when a child has read the book before. O stands for open-ended prompts.
These focus on the pictures in books. They work best for books that have rich, detailed illustrations. For example, when looking at a page in a book that the child is familiar with, you might say,
tell me what's happening in this book. Open-ended prompts help children increase their expressive fluency and attend to detail. WH- prompts, as we spoke about before, usually begin with what, where,
when, why, and how questions. Like open-ended prompts, WH- prompts focus on pictures in the book. They also help children to learn new vocabulary. Distancing prompts. And when we ask children to
relate the pictures or words in the book that they're reading to experiences from outside of the book. For example, when they look at a book with a picture of animals on a farm, you may say something
like, remember when we went to the animal park last week? Which of these animals did we see? Distancing prompts help children form a bridge between books and the real world, as well as helping with
verbal fluency, conversational skills, and narrative skills. Distancing prompts and recall prompts are more difficult than completion, open-ended, and WH- prompts. We're going to show you a video --
[VIDEO BEGINS] NARRATOR: -- dialogic reading. MAN: Dialogic reading is a type of shared book reading that is different in some respects from book reading as you would normally be exposed to. Dialogic
reading involves much more frequent verbal interactions, tends to place the child more in the role of the teller of the story, and the adult in the role of the listener: the person who listens to the
child, who responds to what the child says, who prompts the child to say more. NARRATOR: The classes here are small, a key prescription of dialogic reading. This allows Miss Wilson to direct questions
to every child. The simplest questions are who, what, when, how many? TEACHER: Anisha, what color are the flowers? CHILD: White. TEACHER: There was very little grass in the valley and the billy goats
were so hungry. First, the youngest billy goat -- NARRATOR: Miss Wilson uses a completion prompt, a straightforward fill in the blank. TEACHER: Roared the mean old? CHILDREN: Troll. TEACHER: And he
was very? CHILDREN: Mean! TEACHER: And very? CHILDREN: Ugly! TEACHER: You're right, wow. Show me something that really looks ugly on this troll. What is that? CHILD: Hair. TEACHER: It's very ugly.
You're right. NARRATOR: As kids get older, dialogic reading challenges them to connect the story with outside the class experiences. Miss Wilson draws out these links with queries called distancing
questions. TEACHER: When was it that we touched a goat? Two weeks ago, we were at the [inaudible] and we got to see goats, so that should add to their input and hopefully they'll remember that they
saw goats there. NARRATOR: Dialogic reading was designed to help kids who are slow in developing spoken language. But this simple technique turns out to help all children. TEACHER: This procedure,
which is fairly easy to teach but not something that everyone thinks of doing, is -- has a lot of payoff, has been shown to actually benefit children's listening comprehension and their vocabulary
development. NARRATOR: With the new tool of dialogic reading, Miss Wilson is helping her Head Start classroom live up to its name. TEACHER: So, snip, snap, snout, this tale's told out. [VIDEO ENDS]
PAM KASTNER: These are the references that we have used for this webinar. You'll see that we have the Doing What Works website up there. They have an interactive dialogic reading link with many
resources, one of which we have provided for you, which is the scaffolded levels that Jill and I went through, level two and level three. And you saw her with her son in level one. In addition, we've
indicated a link to the report from the What Works Clearinghouse on the evidence for dialogic reading, improving oral language fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. And we've indicated the
links to the Reading Rockets videos that we shared with you. The books build strong vocabulary and reading as a dialogue. In addition, of course, you had the PowerPoint for your resources. Jill and I
would like to thank you for attending this oral language webinar and look forward to seeing you at PaTTAN trainings in the future. Thank you. JILL DETWILLER: Thank you.
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