This section is the final early literacy component on our list: Print awareness. Print awareness consists of book knowledge and print concepts.

What is Shared Reading?

All children, including children with disabilities who are multilingual learners, benefit from high-quality literacy instruction designed to promote print concepts and book knowledge. To enhance print awareness, adults can share books with children who are multilingual learners. We call this shared reading.

Shared reading emphasizes the interaction between the adult and the child. The adult can read each page, make comments, ask questions, and wait for the child to respond and/or initiate conversations.

Why is Shared Reading Important?

Sharing books and stories with children helps develop their oral and written language abilities, which are foundational to later academic success. According to Monique Senchal, Jo-Anne Lefevre, Eleanor Thomas, and Karen Daley (1998), shared reading accounts for at least 10% of the variance in children’s primary grade reading and language achievement. Through book sharing, adults can model appropriate syntax used for different purposes and teach vocabulary words in context.

While shared reading is important, many children with disabilities tend to show less interest in print than other children and are less likely to want book interactions with adults. Effective interventions to promote book knowledge and print concepts with young children with disabilities who are multilingual learners require a combination of meaningful, child-centered activities and adult-directed explicit instruction. Read the Big 5 Book Knowledge and Print Concepts Supplement by the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning to learn more.

Shared Reading Process

During shared reading, the adult must be responsive to the child. They should promote interactions by seeing what they can get the child to say and how they can respond to the child’s comments and questions.

Adults can model language by using self-talk and parallel talk to describe their own thoughts and comment on what the child seems to be engaged in on each page, especially if the child is not saying much. This may be the case the first several times an educator shares a book with a child, especially if they are not reading in the child’s home language.

For children with disabilities who are multilingual learners, education staff can use verbal and nonverbal cues to direct children’s attention to print concepts that are embedded into book reading interactions, such as asking questions about print, making comments about print, and pointing to and tracking print.

Education staff can also make adaptations and individualize practices to promote children’s participation when sharing stories and interacting with books and print. For example, they can use strategies such as visual supports, modeling, and prompts to teach story structure.

Children who are multilingual learners participate in storybook reading in different ways. Their interest and familiarity with the story and their receptive and expressive language abilities affects how they interact with the story’s ideas, concepts, and vocabulary.

As we have discussed throughout this course, children who are multilingual learners may not be as communicative during initial book sharing. That is why it is important to read books several times and introduce books in a child’s home language whenever possible.

Video: Sharing a Book

Watch this video (1:18) of an educator sharing a book with two children. As you watch, identify ways in which the educator is interacting in a child-oriented way to support language development.

Effective Shared Reading Tips

Shared reading can be done effectively in groups of two or three children so that each child can see the pictures and print and manipulate the pages. Again, the emphasis during shared reading of a storybook is the social interaction, e.g., the enjoyment and conversation between children and the adult.

For children who may need more support, consider curriculum modifications such as using books with different textures, including large, high-contrast print and Braille for children with low vision. Use assistive technologies and multimedia digital texts that can be easily modified by font, size, and color. Add tabs to make book pages easier to turn for children with motor difficulties. Make sure you have a reading area that offers comfortable, supportive seating for children with physical disabilities and is easily accessible to wheelchair users.

Culturally Sustaining Practices

Here are some tips on choosing appropriate children’s books that are written in the child’s home language. Be sure that the books are not stereotypical or offensive in any way to a child and his family.

• Content and illustrations should provide authentic representations of the culture.
• Avoid books with illustrations or storylines that reinforce stereotypes or make certain groups seem foolish or disrespected.
• Form a committee of multilingual staff, families, and volunteers to select and evaluate books in unfamiliar languages or cultures.

Provide many books by authors of color and authors from other historically and currently systemically oppressed groups (i.e. women, LGBTQ, non-English speakers, etc).

Work with each child’s family to write down their stories and find children’s books written in their home languages. The handout available for this lesson, Selecting Culturally Appropriate Books, offers resources for finding books written in multiple languages.

Partner with Families

Here are more ways educators can partner with families to expand both classroom and home libraries and access to literacy experiences in children’s home languages:

• Work with families to select books and materials for a lending library. Allow them to borrow and use the materials to build their child’s home language and literacy skills.
• Have wordless books that include pictures of familiar objects and of people who look like members of the family available. Share the idea with families that using wordless books allows them to tell their own stories about the pictures.
• Collaborate with families to expand literacy experiences they are already fostering with their children to develop their home language. Suggest new ways they can use books and tell stories. For example, acting out a story with dolls or through pantomime.
• Work with families to find a well-lit, cozy area in the home where children can access and read books

Making books with families in their own languages is an excellent way to increase access to appropriate printed materials at home and at school.

• Work with families to identify community sources for books in their home language, such as libraries, ethnic markets, and cultural organizations.
• Offer a workshop or family fun night for families to learn ways to create their own books when few or no books are readily available in their home language.
• Provide space and other support so small groups of families who speak the same language can talk about books, stories, and other literacy experiences they can do with their children at home.

Using Books in Various Languages

Each of you may have several languages spoken in your early childhood programs, requiring help to be able to share books written in these languages with each child. This is just another example of why it is essential to partner with families and community members.

Invite family members or volunteers to read home language books and discuss them with children in small groups.

Offer training to support family members and volunteers to help them learn more about discussing books using shared reading techniques.

Vocabulary and the Home Language

Educators can also learn the key vocabulary words they are targeting in the home language used in a storybook to help make the transfer to classroom language. Using a book’s pictures and props associated with the story can also help educators share books in different languages.

In sum, learn a few key words in the book to highlight the content and use questions, props, and pictures to enhance your communication about the content with the children.

You can also learn words in the children’s home languages by practicing with books that have familiar stories.

Additionally, you can try using bilingual books—those with English words and words from another language. Bilingual books help us understand books written in other languages, but remember, it is more effective to read and share a book in just one language at a time. 

Using the Planned Language Approach with Infants and Toddlers

When we think about the components of the Planned Language Approach (background knowledge, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, print awareness, vocabulary development), it’s often in the context of preschool students who are rapidly developing early literacy skills.

In what ways can the Planned Language Approach directly apply to educators who care for infants and toddlers?

references

Ezell, H. & Justice, L. (2005). Shared storybook reading: Building young children’s language and emergent literacy skills. Paul H. Brookes Publishing. [PDF]

Gillanders, C., & Castro, D. (2011). Storybook reading for young dual language learners. Young Children, 66(1), 91-95. NAEYC.

National Center on Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness (n.d.). NCCLR quick guide for teachers: Selecting culturally appropriate children’s books in languages other than English. [PDF]

National Center on Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness (n.d.). NCCLR quick guide for teachers: How to use bilingual books. [PDF]

National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning (2019). The Big 5 Highly individualized teaching supplements: Book knowledge and print concepts. [PDF]

Senechal, M., LeFevre, J., Thomas, E.M., & Daley, K.E. (1998). Differential effects of home literacy experiences on the development of oral and written language. Reading Research Quarterly, 33(1), 96-116.

Zero to Three (2010, May 19). Supporting language and literacy skills from 0-12 months. [Website]

Zucker, T., Cabell, S., Pentimonti, J., & Justice, L. M. (2013). The role of frequent, interactive prekindergarten shared reading in the longitudinal development of language and literacy skills. Developmental Psychology, 49,1425-1439.