I found this article regarding teaching our children reading skills. I thought it would be helpful for many of our parents. The discussed method is called Dialogic Reading. This method has been found to improve children’s reading skills significantly.

It is important to remember that reading is a very important skill. Not only does it promote literacy and language development but it also helps with parental bonding and social skills.

However, it is also important to remember that reading is a difficult task for children, especially those children who are already taxed by a speech and/or language impairment. Parents are often discouraged by the child’s lack of interest or frustration with reading.

Keep in mind that, reading is a very important skill to be learned and practice of it can prevent your child from falling behind in school, and decrease their chance from falling behind in their performance in later years.

Dialogic Reading allows your child to be the teller of the story rather than just the listener. It involves having your child in the story and allows them to expand their creative abilities.

Reading should be a fun experience for both you and your child, and I think this is a fun and different way to practice reading.

Dialogic Reading follows a method called PEER. It is a short and simple process that helps parents understand more thoroughly the purpose of Dialogic Reading.  It is also a guide for the correct steps that should be taken:

•    Prompt- ask the child to tell you something about the book you two are reading.
•    Evaluate- review the child’s response
•    Expand- rephrase and add information to the child’s response
•    Repeat- ask the child to repeat your phrase
Here are some steps to follow when trying out Dialogic Reading:

1. Let your child pick his/her favorite book, or a new book he/she has never read. (My recommendation is that you begin with a book the child is familiar with.)
2. Before you open the book, let the child look at the book cover and then ask what him/her thinks the story is about.
3. Once you begin reading the story, point at pictures and ask the child about them. For example: let’s say there is a picture of a bird flying. You would ask the child ìwhat is this?î and the child will answer ìbird.î Then you can ask questions such as ìwhat color is the birdî or ìwhat is the bird doing?î
4. You can continue to ask similar questions as you go along in the story. Make sure not to be repetitive, and to ask different types of questions. Below I will post more sample questions for you to try out.
5. At the end of the story, ask the child to tell you what happened in the story, that way the child can practice reading comprehension skills.

I want to go over the different ways you can ask questions to your child. Dialogic Reading uses the acronym CROWD to distinguish the 5 types of questions that can be used when practicing dialogic reading.

Here is how to use CROWD:
•    Completion Prompts- leaving a blank at the end of a sentence and allowing the child to fill in the blank.
Sample Question: “The bus is _________”, the child will compete the sentence by saying “yellow.”

•    Recall Prompts- questions about what happened in the story, or page you just read.
Sample Question: “Tell me what happened to the little boy.”

•    Open-Ended Prompts- works most effectively with picture books, you ask the child to look at a picture   and you ask them to tell you about it.
Sample Question: “What is the little girl doing here?”

•    Wh-Question Prompts- Who, What, When, Where, Why, & How questions.
Sample Question: “What color are his shoes?” “Why did girl laugh?”

•    Distancing Prompts- these questions require the child to think about personal experiences, you show    the child a picture and then tell them to remember an event related to the picture.
Sample Question: lets say there is a picture of a beach; you can ask “do you remember when we went on vacation to the beach? Which of these animals did you see there?”

Remember, reading should be a FUN experience for both you and your child. If you see the child is dazing off and not paying attention to the story, do not force him/her to continue reading. You can say “we’ll finish the rest of the story some other time.”

Dialogic Reading is a very good source for learning, but it requires an effort on your part. Be interactive, fun, and show the child that you are enjoying it yourself. Reading does not have to be a painful task, but a good time to bond with your child too. So put on your PJ’s and cuddle under a blanket, because its story time!
References:

Reading Rocket, Initials. (2008). Reading tips for parents of preschoolers. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/7833

Whitehurst, GJ. (1992 ). Dialogic reading: an effective way to read to preschoolers. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/400