Recognizing Meaning in Children’s Dramatized Responses to a Picture Book

• In Event: Beyond Words: Action and Animation in Young Children’s Reading, Writing, and Playing

Abstract

The reading of narrative picture books is an established everyday practice in early years education. As a means of promoting engagement, educators commonly encourage joining in with the story as it is being read aloud. What is actually going on when children respond in enactment instead of or as well as speech?

As children attend to what is shown, said and done in a dramatic reading, they are watchers as well as listeners. Their interpretations are constructed in an interrelationship between what they see of the book, what they see and hear in the embodied communication of the ‘reader’, and the actions and interactions of co-present others. In responding, children engage in processes of agentive remaking. ‘Intramodal redesign’ refers to changes within discrete modes (e.g. speech or gesture). Certain features are and are not selected for re-production, and may or may not be modified. ‘Transmodal redesign’ is reconfiguration across modes. As some resources are not shared between modes, decisions are reached as to how similar meanings can be remade in ways that sustain constancy.

Earlier studies into repeated readings of stories entailed audio recording. Taking seriously the multiplicity of ways in which young children come to understand and demonstrate their understanding of picture books, three readings of the same narrative over a period of three days were video recorded.

The class of 4- and 5-year-olds was encouraged to copy the teacher’s enactment. A concern with repetition is that children do not have to think for themselves as they simply regurgitate what is given. By re-producing dramatization, children can inhabit the story as they act out events. Re-production of previous enactment simultaneously with the read aloud text transforms repetition into joining in. Where this is connected to the relevant part of the story, recognition of patterning and structure, as well as anticipation, can be inferred. When enactment is not exactly the same as its source, one deduction is that re-production is defective. An alternative is that changes are meaningful modifications made in the light of purpose and in response to the social framing. Whilst the lexis of narrative is largely fixed, there are bounded possibilities in the classroom for contributing fresh dramatizations. Enacted additions beyond what is given by the teacher or others can demonstrate understanding of setting and plot.

Picture book stories are interactively constructed as teachers and children pool their interpretations multimodally. The seeming ease with which children repeat, modify and add dramatizations actually entails seriousness, inventiveness and imagination. It is not necessarily that enactment is not recognized in early years settings, but that modes beyond ‘language’ are subordinated and, later, fall out of school curricula, suggesting that they are a precursor to ‘proper’ communication. By recognizing children’s responses in modes other than or in conjunction with those that are linguistic, their learning can be valued however it is expressed.

Author

• Diane Mavers, Institute of Education - London