Untapped Potential: The Power of Books for Fostering Language and Thinking

3 credits · Peabody College - Professional

This course fosters an understanding of the importance of developing oral language and thinking skills in read alouds and develops students' competence in implementing instructional strategies in their work with children and families. Course content explores historical trends and lines of inquiry in storybook reading research over the past four decades and engages students in critical conversations about the extent to which current pedagogical practices reflect or rebuff research recommendations. The course explores book selection, vocabulary development, inferential reasoning, the use of repeated readings, responding to students' questions and confusions, and crafting high-cognitive demand discussions in narratives read aloud to children from PreK through fourth grade. The roles of adults and approaches to sharing books with children are explored from developmental and cultural perspectives. Content includes careful study and discussion of narrative picture books, criteria for identifying high-quality literature, and extracting worthy story themes with an aim toward developing skill in using books that embody humanizing pedagogies and diverse perspectives. Assignments involve the application of course content to teacher observations, the implementation of multiple readings in embedded fieldwork experiences, book studies, and the opportunities for special projects related to nuanced interest areas. [3]