Informational texts as read-alouds at school and home

Abstract

The role of informational text in primary-grade classrooms has been the subject of much discussion in recent years, and there is converging evidence that young school children have few opportunities to engage with this genre. The studies described here expand the research base to include preschool (Study 1) and home (Study 2) exposures to informational text as read-alouds. School data included 1,830 read-aloud titles from 1,144 teachers of preschool through third grade. Home data included 1,847 titles reported by the parents or other family members of 20 kindergartners over the course of a school year. The findings suggest that in both of these environments - school (including preschool) and home - children have far less exposure to informational text than narrative text. Further, a trend was revealed suggesting that boys may be read proportionately more informational texts in their homes than girls. Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.