Dynamic Responses of Kindergarten Children During Read-Alouds: Adjusting to the Semiotized World of School Culture

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: It’s a Two-Way Street: Understanding the Interactional Nature of Students, Teachers, and Reading

Abstract

This yearlong qualitative case study explores the dynamic processes kindergarten children experience as they adapt to the semiotic forms of communication and response to literature introduced by their teacher during read-aloud events. From the theoretical perspective of social semiotic theory (Hodge and Kress, 1988), the researcher documented with fieldnotes, videotapes, and interviews the ways an experienced classroom teacher transitioned her students from free responses during read-aloud events at the beginning of the school year to more controlled responses that reflected “acceptable” uses of signs in traditional school culture. This paper focuses on three children who responded differently to the teacher’s changing expectations, as examples of resistance, reaction, subversion, and acceptance of forms of signs in classroom interactions.

Author

• Cynthia B. Leung, University of South Florida St. Petersburg