Transacting With Texts: Pre-Readers Utilizing Executive Function as Problem-Solvers, Interpreters, and Analysts

This chapter presents an applied model for supporting preschool children's executive function, skills that serve as protective factors against risks associated with poverty, using Rosenblatt's transactional theory. The authors posit pedagogy that elicits children's responses to an author's/illustrator's picturebook whereby preschool readers' responses are mediated by the teacher through reflective discussion. Children are encouraged to reflect upon literary characters' motivations, behaviors, and problem solving. A demonstration case analysis shows how this model is implemented in a diverse and inclusive university laboratory preschool program where approximately half the children are served through Head Start, a federal program for children living in poverty. Given the preschool years are an especially sensitive period for acquisition of executive function skills, the authors assert that supporting young children's transactions with and interpretations of a text is the type of transactional strategy that has potential for narrowing the opportunity gap.