Why Books?

• Children need to hear many words often: The average vocabulary of a student starting school is about 5000 words, meaning on average children learn about 3.5 words per day. For this to happen, children need a lot of exposure to different language and vocabulary. Books include unfamiliar words, repeat the same words in a variety of sentences throughout the book, and offer opportunities to hear the same vocabulary when reading repeatedly - making them great for language learning. 

• Children learn words when they are interested: Children learn language best when adults follow their lead by joining in their play and talking about their interests. 

• Children learn best when adults are responsive to them: Children benefit when adults continue children’s topics by responding to what they say with a related comment or question, express a positive attitude, and use a variety of words and sentences. 

When Do I Start?

• As soon as you can! Research shows that reading to babies starting at eight months old has a significant impact on language development. 

How Often:

• There is no magic number - but the more the better! Try to read a book at bedtime, or set it up in a routine. 

Steps to Interactive Reading:

1. Let your student pick the book (even if it means reading that same book over and over again - luckily, this is great for language!)

   1. Let them hold the book, turn the pages, skip pages, name every animal or letter on the page, or not even finish the book.  The goal is to engage in the book with you, not read every word!

2. Talk about the Title/Cover: Read them the title, talk about what you think might happen in the book

3. Start Reading: Let your student turn the pages, and try to point at the words as you read.

4. While reading - comment, question, expand, and be silly!

   1. Comment on text and pictures: Talking about the pictures/book gives your child a chance to hear a variety of descriptive language. While commenting, you might want to talk about how something similar happened in your child’s life, talk about what's happening, what they are doing, why they are doing it, how they feel, and describe the pictures. 

      1. use a variety of words – try to avoid just naming the pictures in the book as this will result in your child being exposed to mostly nouns (names of things). While nouns are important, your child also needs to be exposed to words that describe (e.g. “wet”, “hot”, “tall”), action words (“go”, “run”, “sleep”, “eat”), words for feelings (“happy”, “sad”, “tired”), location words (“up”, “down”, “under”), words about time (“now”, “later”, “after”), etc.

   2. Question: (Don't ask too many questions - we don't want them to feel interrogated). Ask what the character is doing, why their doing it, where they are, or what they feel.

   3. Expand their language: This looks like repeating what they say while adding a descriptive word.  If your child points at a picture and says “dog”, you can reply with “that’s a black/big/happy dog”. Remember to keep your sentences grammatically correct while expanding. Kids need to hear proper grammar to use proper grammar! “Dog runned” can be repeated back as “That’s right. The dog RAN”.

   4. Be Silly: Try out funny voices for the characters, insert emotion, or act out your favorite parts. 

5. Go slow, and stay with your child: If they want to talk about a page for a long time - let them! Instead of trying to fit in all of your child’s favorite books before bedtime, try slowly going through one or two. While reading, try to slow your pace. The benefits are twofold: your child has the time to take a conversational turn if they’d like, and they have more time to process the story, which can lead to better comprehension.

6. When you finish the book, ask them what it was about: Have you child summarize what happened. If they have trouble, try telling them (e.g., "The story was about a very hungry caterpillar who ate and ate and ate some more, and then slept in a cocoon and woke up as a beautiful butterfly")

7. (Bonus) Extend into play: Use your imagination to relate the book to play time. Did you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Pretend to eat different things during play!