Read With Me!

In March, I attended a webinar presented by Dr. Shari Robertson, PhD, CCC-SLP entitled Building Better Readers Through Early Collaborative Partnerships.  The focus was on drawing parents into a collaborative "wrap around" approach with early childhood educators to support the language and literacy development of young learners.  Early in the webinar, Dr. Robertson made a simple but powerful statement:  we are good at telling parents about the need to read to their children (the why), but we never tell them what or how to read to children.  Wow!  Absolute ah-ha moment.  In his book [affiliate link] Raising Readers: Helping Your Child to Literacy, Steven Bialostok discusses six stages of reading that happen before formal reading instruction ever begins: learning to love books, enjoying the meaning of books, learning how books work, discovering that print has meaning, memorizing books, and rehearsing books.  That's a lot of learning that happens simply by parents reading to their child.  Dr. Robertson spent the remainder of the webinar presenting strategies to teach parents from her parent training program Read With Me! 

The Read With Me! program is designed to facilitate oral language and preliteracy skill development in young children (18 months to 8 years, although can work for older children with delays/disabilities).  These strategies help parents, caregivers, and early childhood educators learn how to make reading time interactive to get the most out of it. 

1: Echo Reading

This is not a natural strategy, but is a very effective way to build confidence and encourage interaction during reading.  You read a short bit of the book and then encourage your child to repeat ("Say what I say!"). This strategy helps children understand that what we are saying matches the words on the page and can help highlight/facilitate vocabulary development. 

Books best for Echo Reading include: repetitive lines, short phrases/sentences, few words on a page (not too much text/language), and bright, engaging pictures.

Example books:  Brown Bear, Brown Bear; Where Is The Green Sheep?; Goodnight Moon; Capering Cows; In the Tall, Tall Grass; Quick As A Cricket; Dr. Seuss board books

2: Paired Reading

This is a strategy that comes naturally to most adults.  After you have read a book repeatedly (at least five times), you read part of the book and then pause to let your child fill in the next part. This strategy helps build phonemic and phonological awareness.

Books best for Paired Reading include: books with strong rhythm and rhyme or repetitive words/phrases/lines.

Example books:  Jump, Frog, Jump!; But Not The Hippopotamus; Silly Sally; One Duck Stuck; Pants on Ants; Each Peach, Pear, Plum; My Cow Can Bow

For more rhyming books, check out this list from The Measured Mom, this list from No Time For Flashcards,  or this list from Teaching 2 & 3 Year Olds.  Also check out this list of repetitive books from Beauty In The Mess.

3: Questioning Strategies

This strategy can be tricky.  Most adults know that asking questions is a good way to involve children in the story.  However, asking questions that have only one correct answer makes the interaction feel like a test and creates stress!  This is actually counterproductive to building early language and literacy skills.  We want fun and stress-free!  So we need to ask good, "friendly" questions.  "Friendly" questions encourage participation and critical thinking and help facilitate longer, more complex verbal responses from your child.  All answers are acceptable.  The point is to get your child interacting and thinking.

4: Predicting

This strategy really only works the first time you read a book with your child.  Be sure to preview the book before reading it with your child so you can be prepared for the prediction clues provided in the book.  Then read the book with your child, pausing at "cliff-hanger" moments to ask your child what they think will happen next, or guess the answer to a question posed in the story.  This strategy starts to teach foreshadowing and again supports critical thinking and oral language skills.

Example books for Friendly Questions and Predicting: Is Your Mama a Llama?; Who is Driving?; Shivering Sheep; Dos and Don'ts; Mary Wore Her Red Dress; If you Give a Mouse a Muffin (and others); Rosie's Walk

For more book ideas, check out this list of books for making predictions by This Reading Mama.

5: Wordless Books

Wordless books provide an abundance of opportunities to use questioning and predicting strategies.  They also build critical thinking and language skills.  Wordless books are powerful for older kids as well as little ones.  You basically use the book as a jumping off point to have a conversation with your child page by page through the book.  The point is participation, not perfection, so however long your child decides the story goes is okay!

Example books:  Spotless Spot; Goodnight, Gorilla; A Boy, A Dog, and a Frog; Tuesday; Good Dog, Carl; The Red Book (and others); Hug

For more ideas, check out this list from Nerdy Book Club.

6: Reader's Theater

This is when your child participates with their whole body!  For example, by doing physical actions, using props/puppets to act out the story or anything else you can think of.  This strategy encourages your child to engage with more than just their eyes and ears.

Good books include: lots of fun action to act out!

Example books: From Head to Toe; Run, Turkey, Run!; I Can Do That; Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed; We're Going on a Bear Hunt; Shake My Sillies Out; The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

For more book ideas that get kids up and moving, check out this list from KC Edventures or this list of books that promote dramatic play from Homegrown Friends.

Remember: the number one priority is to keep reading with your child enjoyable (for both of you)!  It should be a stress-free time where you invite interaction and participation but never push or require it.  This is not a time to "drill".  Simply invite participation, pause (give space for your child to participate), and then move on.  Don't worry about mistakes - your goal is to get your child actively involved in the reading process, not perfection!

Here is one last bonus list of books that encourage interaction from Hands On As We Grow.

Click here for a link to the Read With Me! manual on the Dynamic Resources website.  For children ready for the next step, check out Building Better Readers.  While you are on Dr. Robertson's website, check out the speciality children's books that can be paired with different reading strategies for preliteracy development or can be used to target various speech and/or language goals.

Happy reading!

Disclosure:  I received no compensation for this post or for attending the webinar.  Opinions expressed are mine.  This post contains affiliate links.

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