Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Child Response Report
Child Response Report
Book Rationale: Provide the name, author, and genre of the book with a 2-3 sentence description.
Then make a case for why you selected this book, drawing upon features of the words and pictures
that you found to be exemplary. Please draw upon 2-3 relevant course readings in this section.
There is one common feature of the themes of these books: they are totally different. Lost and Found is
about loneliness; Chalk is about wisdom; And Last Stop on Market Street is about perspective (my
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summary can be very subjective, but you got the point). Three picture books all had once deeply
touched me, regardless of their different themes, so I figured they could be good options for the kid -
so that the kid has some authority to choose based on their own interests. This can be helpful to tap
the kid’s reading motivation (Kohn, 2010, p. 19). In addition, as I reflected on them, I realized their
genres can in fact cover the main genres of literature - travel, fantasy, and daily life. The morals of the
three stories are also serving as the function of literature, since they have the impact of “interrupting
readers take-for-granted social scripts” (Moya, 2016). It is typical to tell a story of a boy sending a
lost animal back, but the boy found his and its loneliness and they started travelling together as
friends; It is typical to tell a story of a magic chalk that could make drawings become alive, but the
kids finally returned the chalks; It is typical to tell a story of hard things happened in a poor family,
but nana told the boy how beautiful their life was.
Metaphor is a natural way to link texts and pictures (Sipe, 2012, p. 5). I hope the kid can find it and
develop understanding of the art form of picture books, as well as the visual and verbal literacy.
Context: Provide a brief overview of the context for this read aloud event. Provide the name of the
child (use a pseudonym), their age, and your relationship to them. Describe the time and place of the
reading, drawing upon relevant details that shaped the ethos of this read aloud event.
Picture books are not typically used for English education (even Chinese Education) in our country. The
textbooks have pictures, but they are not really picture books. So I attempt to use these picture books
as a surprising event in our session to show my student, Emily (pseudonym), who is a 17-year-old girl.
She is studying in a high school in Beijing.
I have been tutoring Emily’s English for about a year and a half each Saturday. I did not expect to
have such a close relationship with her at first - she was just polite and quiet - but now she loved to
share her life with me. However, if compared to other really extroverted students, she is still a quiet
girl, seldom talking actively, not used to reacting or commenting on things immediately, preferring
simple adjectives such as “good”, “interesting”, or “not bad” (and that is the end). From time to time,
I encourage and wait for her to talk more about things, and I can see she is improving.
The Read Aloud Event happened on July 25, a typical Saturday morning. She was in Dali, her
hometown, to spend her summer vacation. We met through a zoom meeting at 9:00 am.
General Impressions: Describe your general impressions of the read aloud event. Provide a brief
overview of both highlights and challenges that you encountered as a reader/facilitator.
During the read aloud event, what stood out to me most was that Emily immediately pointed out there
was a “dragon” on the bus:
I did not realize that until the fifth times we read the Last Stop on Market Street in the class discussion
with my group mate. I thought it was a crocodile. I was curious about why Emily referred to it as a
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“dragon”, and she answered that because it was breathing fire. At that point, I only thought, well,
maybe. But it was green and the “fire” in my opinion also looked like the tongue. Although a crocodile
did not make sense at all (I had secretly believed that it was simply because one of the authors liked
crocodile), I either did not see how a dragon made sense. After reading, we looked at the cover again.
I suddenly realized Emily could be right. We had read about the bus “breathe fire” on this page:
I simply assumed that it meant the bus was breathing fire prior to this event. However, nana could be
just referring to the dragon was breathing fire! I realized that and told Emily about how I understood
the dragon now due to her inspiration - it was subtly mentioned in the text indeed, just that I had not
noticed the link between pictures and texts based on some wrong assumptions (the crocodile and
everything). She seemed happy after hearing that.
The challenge was that Emily was still not so willing to comment during and after reading. I could not
figure out any reason at first. As long as we got back to our daily talk, she immediately became more
delighted and cheerful, and willing to share her life. After reviewing the video record, I realized that
she could feel a bit disappointed for the story was not as her expected. I asked her to speculate the
story based on the cover, and she thought it would be a story showing the market. But it turned out to
be the journey to the market street itself. I knew from our talk that Emily had been spending much
time visiting local market and streets in her hometown, so she probably felt the story was not so
relatable to her recent experience. That could also be the reason why she seemed distracted sometime
during reading (and as I said “this is the end page”, she seemed pretty surprised).
Approach to the Read Aloud: Explain the approach that you took to reading this book aloud with this
child, taking into account the moves you made before, during and after the reading. Before: How did
you plan for the read aloud? What approach did you decide to take with this book and this child and
why? How did you plan? What questions did you plan ahead of time? What key ideas did you hope to
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explore in reading this book? During: How did you introduce the book and read aloud before reading?
What sort of invitation did you make? What openings of the book did you select to focus attention on?
What did you do to encourage discussion? What adaptations did you have to make during the read
aloud? After: How did you encourage reflection on the book? What invitation did you make to the
reader to look back on the book and think about it after the reading?
Before:
I decided to prepare at least three picture books with different but engaging themes for Emily to
choose from. This is to assure that Emily’s motivation will not be killed by me assigning one picture
book, as she could have some autonomy to decide by her own interests (Kohn, 2010, p. 19), to mimic
how we normally choose one book to read in a book store.
Here was my plan - There were some questions that must be asked, and there were others that should
be asked based on which one she chooses. The must-asked questions were:
1. How do you feel about the cover? Could you predict what kind of story will be told? (before reading)
2. Do you have any favorite page or element? (before reading, and make sure Emily knows that she
can point it out anytime while reading)
3. How do you feel about the story? (the first question after reading)
Other questions are:
1. What is the theme of the story? (after co-reading Lost and Found)
2. How do you feel about the experience of creating texts for a picture book? (after writing texts for
Chalk)
3. How did the author craft the picture book? (after me reading Last Stop on Market Street)
Besides, I wrote a memo to make sure I remember to tell Emily that this was not going to be an
assessment, but a simple reading event. I also thought one piece of advice could be helpful if Emily
would not speak too much - do not hesitate to share some of my thoughts with her to make it more
like a discussion - this was one tip that I overheard from Dr. Whitelaw after class.
During:
only said she could not understand one or two words after my asking. I usually invited her to guess
what those words meant, basing on the visual information. She made some successful guesses, and
failed in some of them. For example, she could immediately know that “skip” on this page (the first
picture) meant skip, and what did “smell like freedom” may smell like.
Meanwhile, she could make a mistake, thinking that “petals” on that page (the second one) meant
“pot”, as she saw a flowerpot hanging.
Emily had never said if she loved one page or not. At first, I tried to help her understand each page,
but I soon became worried that this could be destroying her space of imagination. Therefore, I just
keep reading and pause. If she did not say anything, I would not explain or ask again - since she did
not want to stop. I found that she developed a huge interest in finding meanings of new words. She
even asked what did “Trixie” meant.
I loved the page about the straw metaphor, so I said I wanted to hear what she thought about it. She
focused on what did “drinking through” could mean, and she deduced that “straw” probably meant
“mouth” or “root (for a tree)”. I asked her to find some clues in the picture. Emily said there was
nothing special to her.
Then I said: “You would have a ah-huh moment after you know what ‘straw’ mean!” and I read it
again in Chinese to show her the true meaning.
However, as I reflected on the video just now, I realized that I really should say this before I told her
to find some clues - she seemed so engaged with finding clues after I said the ah-huh moment thing!
But I did not leave her enough time to think and immediately revealed the answer (because I was too
eager to listen to her thoughts, in order to share my appreciation for this page). That was a mistake I
definitely should not made again. The event was not about me, but about the kid. As I knew sharing
my thoughts could be a tip to start a conversation, I should not share too much instead of listening.
This was a dilemma and I should remember not to cross the line when practicing this tip again.
After:
After I read the final page, I said: “The End.” Emily saw and said: “Ah! It ends?”
“It ends.” I repeated.
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I showed her the back, and scrolled the file to the beginning, where we could see the cover again, and
asked: “How is it? What is the first thing that comes across your mind?”
Emily hesitated.
“Probably, probably, probably... I did not understand it. I am a bit confused...Hmm...(You said) it was
about one thing...what was it?”
That was another trick. I told her the whole picture book was about one thing, but no one said that.
Emily may be able to find that. However, I did not know whether this was a good trick or not. It
seemed that Emily was completely confused by how I put it, but in fact, it was not hard at all.
So I smiled and said: “Well, it was really about how the author craft the whole story. Do you know the
way they craft the story?”
“By questions,” she answered, “questions for the grandma.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled again, and scrolled down to help her review all the conversations: “What kind of questions?”
“What kind of questions? ‘Questions that became harder to answer’?”
That was another quotation from me. Emily also smiled. I smiled outside but cried inside, thinking
“it’s almost there!” But I simply said: “Exactly. I was thinking - just to share what I think - if you have
any other idea, feel free to tell me. I really want to discuss this with you. (Emily said “yes”) This thing
recurring in the whole book was never told verbally, but readers could sense it secretly. It was
something like a subtext. It says that in fact, CJ and nana were not in a good condition. They were
very poor.”
“AH!” Emily said.
“You may sense it. For instance, CJ’s friend got on a car, but they (Emily: “They could only stay on the
bus)...yes, they could only hold an umbrella in the rain and waited for the bus. They always had to go
to the market street for the soup kitchen after going to church. The market street was full of garbage,
and dirty things, very poor. They were not buying lunch. The food was given by the soup kitchen. On
the way, CJ saw other boys had MP3, and he hoped he had. His classmate had a new hat, and he
hoped he had. He did not get why they had to go to the soup kitchen after church. His classmates never
had to go out for lunch. I think it is a brilliant way to make it unspoken. If I were his nana, I would
feel ‘wow, these questions are so hard to answer’. If I said it was because we were poor, I felt that
could be really sad. As an adult, I would be afraid to tell him that we were poor. He might not
understand poor. But nana’s wise answer was leading him to observe life, in life there are - such us
the tree’s straw, the blind man on the bus, and the woman with a jar of butterflies, and the man
playing the guitar...Through these details, I thought she managed to help him see many beauties. She
was practically telling him that being poor does not mean they could not feel the beauty in life. I think
this attitude touched me a lot. That is the reason why I love the book.”
Emily said: “Right! It would be boring if she just said ‘because we are poor’.”
“Yes. What did you feel when you were watching it? Do you have more things to say?”
“Nothing much.”
“Nothing much?”
“But I can not feel there is a huge connection between the cover and the story. The dragon breathing
fire, in particular.”
I said: “Yes, the dragon breathing fire. I also kept wondering why...As you pointed it out that it was a
cartoon dragon, I was thinking that maybe it implied the journey they went through on the bus would
be exciting. They had met so many different people... Wait. YOU KNOW WHY IT SEEMS LIKE
BREATHING FIRE? I actually did not realize it until I read it to you!”
I said the theory (mentioned before in the General Impressions Section) of how the bus breathing fire
and the dragon breathing fire are linked together afterwards. Another text and picture relationship,
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just like the straw. It was an amazing finding. This event solved my biggest confusion about the
picture book.
As I told Emily, she seemed happy. I did not know whether she was truly happy that she helped me
understand something, or she was just being polite. I hope she really felt happy, since I did not do
anything for her in this event. Surprisingly, she did me a big favor. (Did not see that coming, really.)
I also asked why she chose Last Stop on Market Street from the three. She answered: “I think Lost and
Found seems too simple. I could know the story from the cover. And the Chalk one is too unpredictable.
So I chose this.”
Response Categories: Please complete the chart below to document the data you collected on the child’s
responses to story. What categories of reader response did the child engage? (us the categories from
Hancock, Sipe, and Kiefer on Canvas). Please the direct quotation and the name of the category that
you think captures this response (the notes column optional and you can use this if there is additional
information you want me to know). Draw upon the categories presented in the readings and, if you
need to, create your own.
Data Analysis: Take stock of the range and variation of responses that the child engaged with this
story. What patterns do you notice? What do these patterns tell you about how this child engaged with
this story? Reflect upon how your moves influenced how the child responded. Maintain a tentative tone
in your analysis, keeping in mind that your analysis is not a comprehensive analysis of this child as a
sense-maker of story; rather, it is a deep look at their engagement with this particular book and how
you read it.
Emily was most engaged in the book when she needed to analyzed the meanings that seemed
ambiguous to her. For example, after I showed her the end pages of Last Stop on Market Street, she
immediately said there was a dragon on the bus. As I said it could be a crocodile because of the green
color (and I also said that the fire did make it more like a dragon), she added that it could be a snake
as well. Its eyes looked like a snake. We discussed further, but when afterwards I asked if she could
see more things on the cover, she paused and said: “How to put it? I feel nothing special.”
“So the dragon is the most special thing to you?”
“Well, not really.”
Then I said: “You saw the dragon at first glance.”
“Hmm. I think this image does not match with images on a normal bus.”
“How does it make you feel?” I asked.
“Feel?”Emily frowned, “fairy tale?”
You could see that she loved to talk about the creature on the bus. Later this pattern occurred again
when I asked her what on the picture may imply the true meaning of “straw”. Emily said: “drinking
through a straw... (I said: “it is okay to make mistakes. I simply want to hear what you are thinking. )
The ‘through’ means “using” the straw?”
“Yes.”
“So “using”...I think it means using a ‘mouth’ or for a tree its ‘root’.”
“Hmmm, ” I said, “You knew it from it was a tree, right?”
“Yes.”
“Look at the picture, do you have any other thoughts?”
She hesitated and said: “The picture? Seems like nothing special.”
You may have noticed that Emily mentioned “nothing special” twice. When she did not recognize
anything or did not engaged, she said “nothing special” and that stopped the discussion, but if she felt
the meaning of a image or a word was not clear enough, she said much more than she usually would.
As I reflected on this pattern, I realized that it was a natural thing. To talk about something
ambiguous sounds more like a conversation, rather than to follow the tutor’s instruction and try to
find ONE ANSWER that the tutor already has in mind. I learned that I should not have a fixed answer
inside when I was asking kids what they feel (even if there is a answer). It would be better to act like
another kid who also knows little about the picture book and attempted to find some answers WITH
her (as opposed to guiding her - it would still feel like an assessment - I even had not realized it).
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Reflections: What did you learn about this child as a sense-maker of story? What wonderings are you
left with about the child’s engagement with this story? What went well for you and what would you do
differently if you were to do this read aloud over? What wonderings are you left with about how the
child engages with other types of stories? If you were to read to this particular child again, what
would you be interested in exploring? What sort of book might you select if you had the chance to read
with them again?
Children are engaged when they could not understand some of the elements, and these elements were
not too hard to understand - like the “Trixie” - she would ask me straight if she could not figure out
the meaning by its context at all.
However, I still wondered what made her feel disappointed when she said: “But it was not about the
market.” I should have asked that.
Lingering Questions: What lingering questions emerge for you from this process? About reading aloud?
About child response? About children’s engagement with story more broadly?
I started to notice she seemed a bit distracted from the first page. Only if I asked her questions or
turned the page, she would become more concentrated. I still wonder what made her distracted from
the screen - whether it was the pdf too small to look at or I read too bad. Should I invite her to read
with me? Shouldn’t I pause too much (in case that she would not feel the the natural flow of the story)?
A successful Read Aloud Event is way harder than I thought when our teachers read the picture book
for us at classes. As a student, I hope the teacher could read it vividly and do not stop. However, if I
have any favourite page, I hope the teacher pause and allow time to talk about that during or after
reading. Sometimes I do not want to share my feelings with all the classmates because I do not want
them think it is a waste of their time. Sometimes I hesitate to speak because other classmates have
already point out things. Sometimes I talk with the teacher but I know my feelings are not so
important. Sometimes I simply want to share but there is no response.
This event put myself in different shoes. I feel exhausted to write this report, but I do reflect on the
read aloud event deeper than I used to. The organized questions make this assignment better than
others, but I should really write less (but I couldn’t! Ugh!) Anyway, I also have learned that the report
assignment should be designed this way, so I still like this experience in general. I should thank Dr.
Whitelaw for designing such various prompts for us.
While I was writing and replaying our video, I also wondered what made Emily stay in touch for such a
long time with me. I do not have a teacher who keeps in touch constantly (although I hope I could). I
should definitely thank her and ask her about that at our next meeting.
References
Freire, P. (1983). The Importance of the Act of Reading. The Journal of Education, 165(1), 5-11.
Kohn, A. (2010). How to Create Nonreaders: Reflections on Motivation, Learning, and Sharing
Power. The English Journal, 100(1), 16-22.
Nodelman, P. (1984). Art Theory and Children's Picture Books. CLAQ, 9(1), 15-18.
Sipe, L. R. (2008). Storytime: Young Children Literacy Understanding in the Classroom. Teachers
College Press.
Sipe, L. R. (n.d.). Connecting Visual and Verbal Literacy: Second Graders Learn About Art Techniques in
Picture Books. Teacher Research.
*Pictures from the three picture books are not cited in this report for simplicity.