Teacher Storybook Reading Style: A Comparison of Six Teachers

This investigation describes the storybook reading styles of 6 kindergarten teachers who read the same 4 storybooks. Transcriptions ofaudiotapes and videotapes were classified using a system that emerged from the data. This system focused on three major facets of style: 1) the focus of the teacher talk during the storybook reading; 2) the type of information that the teacher and/or the students talked about during the storybook reading; and 3) the instructional strategies used by the teacher. Relying on both qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data, the investigators determined that each of the six teachers had a distinctive storybook reading style with variations apparent in each of the three major facets of style. These findings suggest a need to investigate whether variations in teacher storybook reading style differentially influence children's literacy development.

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