We know that reading books and stories to young children benefits their learning and development, including their communication and language. But evidence suggests that “interactive reading” – during which an adult encourages a child to talk about the story – can be a particularly effective approach.
What is ‘interactive reading?’
The EEF Early Years Evidence Store describes ‘interactive reading’ as:
The adult engages in considered actions within the context of shared reading (either one-to-one or with a group of children) that encourage children to become an active participant in ‘reading’ the book (e.g., through engagement with images, text, or questions). Over time the balance of who ‘reads’ or facilitates discussion about the book being read passes increasingly to the child.
In the Early Years Evidence Store we can watch Rachel (a childminding assistant) use the interactive reading approach as she reads a familiar story to an 18-month-old child.
Rachel intentionally and skilfully uses specific practices such as:
- Extending;
- Imitation;
- Questioning;
- Repetition; and
- Prompting to implement the approach.
Successful interactive reading tends to involve a prompt to encourage interactions between the adult reader and child(ren). Prompting is the act of drawing attention to something related to the book being read that encourages a response from the child, such as asking questions or allowing the children to complete the sentence. For example, in the video Rachel prompts the child to open the flap on the page, she then uses a completion prompt to encourage the child to say the word “dog”.
There are a few tools that might help adults’ planning and thinking about their approach to reading, such as the CROWD and PEER framework (EEF ‘Preparing for Literacy’ Guidance Report).
More than just reading a book!
Compared to passive reading, interactive reading requires children to adopt a more active role as, for example, the teacher asks children story-related questions and encourages them to respond to the story (Mol, Bus, and de Jong 2009; Mol et al. 2008).
Spoken interactions, for example word use in exchanges, dialogue and conversations, between the reader and the child go beyond the text in the book; the more the child participates or responds, the more their oral language skills develop.
Using open questions encourages children to talk about their own ideas and experiences in relation to the story. It is through these stimulating conversations that children become inspired to engage in a story.
When you watch the approach of interactive reading in action, the knowledge and skill of the educator are clearly visible. A key finding from the evidence in the Early Years Evidence store is that staff are likely to benefit from training or professional development to use the approach effectively.
What makes the approach of interactive reading a ‘best bet’?
The EEF Early Years Toolkit reports that communication and language approaches such as interactive reading have a low cost to implement, and typically have a high impact, boosting young children’s learning by up to seven months.
All children appear to benefit from such approaches, but some studies show slightly larger effects for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
However, there are indications that settings should use a range of different approaches to developing communication and language skills, as it is unlikely that one approach alone is enough to secure young children’s development and progress.
Visit the EEF website – Evidence based early years support to find more support and resources for professionals working in schools, nurseries and other early years settings.