During the Read Aloud
How can teachers facilitate conversation, especially with multilingual learners, as the read aloud occurs? Intentional questioning guides children to interact with the text and demonstrates grammatical structures and vocabulary usage. The read aloud also reveals crucial information about children’ s current language skills.
Engage Multilingual Learners in Meaningful Discourse
During the read aloud, Mr. Jensen pauses at certain parts to invite children to respond and engage with the text using gestures, actions, words, their home languages, or short phrases. He introduces the word move while pointing to the illustration of a gorilla on the book’ s cover.
He asks,“ What animal is this?”
“ A gorilla,” Thuy, an intermediate multilingual learner, says.
“ Yes, it’ s a gorilla,” Mr. Jensen responds.“ How can the gorilla move his body?”
Miguel stands up and pounds on his chest, and some of the children respond with smiles and laughter. Mr. Jensen says,“ Yes, a gorilla can move his body by pounding on his chest,” while modeling the movement himself.“ The gorilla is moving his arms. I can move my body like a gorilla too! What about you?” He invites the class to“ move your body like a gorilla.”
As he continues reading, he asks,“ What animal do you think we will see next?”
Jaime, who is an emergent multilingual learner, puts his arm to his nose and swings it about. He pauses and is unsure of what to say. Then he says,“ Elefante?”
Mr. Jensen nods.“ An elephant,” he says.“ That’ s a good guess. I’ ve seen an elephant at the zoo. What about you?”
Jaime says,“ Sí. Elephant is big.”
“ Yes, elephants are big,” Mr. Jensen says.“ Let’ s see if there’ s an elephant when I turn the page.”
Interactive read alouds foster vocabulary development, enhance conceptual understanding, and encourage active child participation( Cho et al. 2025). As illustrated in Mr. Jensen’ s read aloud, multilingual learners benefit from scaffolds that strengthen comprehension and encourage participation. These include questioning techniques tailored to each child’ s level of English language proficiency, modeling how to use language to communicate ideas about the text, and assessing children’ s understanding throughout the read aloud( Justice & Sofka 2010; Castro et al. 2011; Cho et. al. 2025).
Promote Interactive Learning Through Strategic Questioning
Educators can use a variety of question types to support children’ s active involvement, language development, conceptual knowledge, and critical thinking( Ackerman & Tazi 2015). For example, educators might ask
› Open-ended questions:“ What do you notice about how the animals are moving their bodies?”
› Predictive questions:“ What animal do you think we will see next?”
› Inferential questions:“ Why do you think the gorilla thumps its chest?”
› Connection questions:“ When do you move your head like the penguin in the book?”
As the vignette illustrates, questions can be used not only to check understanding but also to encourage children to talk, move, predict, compare, and make connections between the text and their own experiences.
82 Young Children
Fall 2026