Elementary Students Co-Constructing Meaning during Read aLouds with Picture E-Books

Educators need to provide students with opportunities to engage with digital texts to support their development in becoming digitally literate (Plowman et al., 2012). The purpose of this practitioner research inquiry was to explore how teachers can support readers in the meaning-making process during read alouds with picture e-books, which contain multimodal, digital features that can encourage interactions with readers and texts (Aliagas & Margallo, 2017; Schugar et al., 2016). I drew on post-humanism and multimodal literacy to examine these research questions: (1) What multimodal features invited the third-grade students and me to interact with one another and picture e-books during read alouds at school? and (2) How did the third-grade students and I interact with one another and picture e-books to make meaning of texts during read alouds at school? As researcher and teacher, I read 11 picture e-books during read alouds with four third-grade students, who qualified for additional support in literacy, in our classroom from January 2019-June 2019. I moved through cycles of collecting, coding, and reflecting about data from interest conversations, video-recorded read alouds, transcripts, field notes, multimodal features profile, and memos. I found that interactions with other readers, as opposed to the multimodal features alone, were most beneficial in supporting the students during the meaning-making process with picture e-books. Findings can add to the growing body of literature related to shifts in the digital teaching of reading across in-person, hybrid, and virtual learning environments (Bourassa, 2021; Parker, 2021; Schweiger, 2022; Stoetzel & Shedrow, 2021). [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]