Dialogic Reading

(Strategy adapted from “Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers,” National Research Council, 2000)

    A program of shared reading, called dialogic reading, can produce substantial changes in preschool children’s language skills. Dialogic reading involves several changes in the way adults typically read books to children. Central to these changes is a shift in roles. During typical shared reading, the adult reads and the child listens, but in dialogic reading the child learns to become the storyteller. The adult assumes the role of an active listener, asking questions, adding information, and prompting the child to increase the sophistication of descriptions of the material in the picture book. A child’s responses to the book are encouraged through praise and repetition, and more sophisticated responses are encouraged by expansions of the child’s utterances and by more challenging questions from the adult reading partner. For two- and three-year-olds, questions from adults focus on individual pages in a book, asking the child to describe objects, actions, and events on the page (e.g., “What is this? What color is the duck? What is the duck doing?”). For four- and five-year-olds, the questions increasingly focus on the narrative as a whole or on relations between the book and the child’s life (e.g., “Have you ever seen a duck swimming? What did it look like?”). The following is a more detailed description of this procedure:

    The fundamental reading technique in dialogic reading is the PEER sequence. This is a short interaction between a child and the adult. The adult prompts the child to say something about the book, evaluates the child’s response, expands the child’s response by rephrasing and adding information to it, and repeats the prompt at some later point to make sure that the child has learned from the expansion.

    Here is an example of a PEER sequence: The teacher is sitting with a group of four children. They are reading the picture book “Dibble and Dabble.”In the book, the two ducks Dibble and Dabble see what appears to be a furry snake. They alert their friends, vole, frog, fish, kingfisher, and heron. Everyone becomes frightened as they imagine that the horrible snake is chasing them. They meet a boy, Pete, who calms them down. He takes them to see the furry snake. As the furry snake begins to move behind the reeds, a cat appears. It turns out that the furry snake was only the cat’s tail.

    At the page in the story in which the furry thing is shown sticking out of the reeds, the teacher asks, “What’s this?” That is the prompt. Prompts are often questions, but can be statements or requests such as “Tell me about this page.” When one of the children responds to the teacher’s prompt by saying “grass,” the teacher follows by saying “You can say grass. It’s kind of a grass.” That is the evaluation. An evaluation involves both the teacher’s judgment about the child’s performance and feedback to the child. In this case, she is acknowledging that the children are on the right track in saying “grass” but also gently telling them that a better word is available with the phrase “It’s kind of a grass.” She immediately gives the children the information they need to improve their response by saying, “It’s called reeds.” That is the expansion. An expansion is a form of feedback. It takes what the child has said and demonstrates how the answer could be improved. Even correct answers can be expanded by modeling for children how to make their answers longer or better. The teacher pauses and lets the children repeat what they have heard; that is the repetition. At this time, one of the children says, “Weeds.” The teacher provides another evaluation and repetition sequence by saying, “Not weed, reed.” She pauses and gives them another chance to repeat, which they do.

    Except for the first reading of a book to children, PEER sequences should occur on nearly every page. For many books, the adult should do less and less reading of the written words in the book each time the book is shared with the child and leave more to the child.

    Prompts are not always necessary. If a child says something spontaneous about a book, then the adult can follow with an evaluation, expansion, and repetition. This is just a PEER sequence without the initial prompt. The child begins it instead of the adult. There are five types of prompts that are used in dialogic reading to begin PEER sequences. You can remember these prompts with the word CROWD:

• “C” stands for completion prompts. The adult leaves a blank at the end of a sentence for the child to fill in. These are typically used in books with rhymes or books with repetitive phases. Completion prompts provide children with information about the structure of language that is critical to later reading. An example of a completion prompt is: “I think I’d be a glossy cat. A little plump but not too ___.”
• Recall prompts are questions about what happened in a book that a child has already read. Recall prompts work for nearly everything except alphabet books. They help children in understanding story plot and in describing sequences of events. They can be used not only at the end of a book, but also at the beginning if a child has been read that book before. An example of a recall prompt is: “Remember when we read “Dibble and Dabble” yesterday? Who were Dibble and Dabble?”
• Open-ended prompts focus on the pictures in books. They work best for books that have rich, detailed illustrations. Open-ended prompts help children increase their expressive fluency and attend to detail. They are open-ended because there is no single correct response and there are many things a child might say in response to the prompt. An example of an open-ended prompt is: “I read that page. Now it’s your turn to read this page. What is happening on this page?”
• Wh- prompts include what, where, when, and why. Like open-ended prompts, Wh- prompts focus on the pictures in books. Their primary function is to teach children new vocabulary. An example of a Wh- prompt is: The teacher points to the reeds that are illustrated in “Dibble and Dabble” and says, “What’s this?”
• Distancing prompts ask children to relate the pictures or words in the book they are reading to experiences outside the book. Distancing prompts help children form a bridge between books and the real world, as well as helping with verbal fluency, conversational abilities, and narrative skills. An example of a distancing prompt is: The teacher is reading the picture book “Rotten Ralph.” She says, “I don’t think Ralph likes the cake. What’s your favorite dessert? Are there any desserts that you don’t like?”

Dialogic reading techniques should be used while reading a book with a small group of children for repeated readings, spread out over several days. Procedures should differ when reading the book the first time versus after children have mastered the book. The first reading of a book should consist much more of straight reading than prompting so that children can be exposed to the story that the book conveys. Children should be oriented to the book the first time with a few comments about the cover and the title. Subsequent readings should introduce prompts and increasingly turn the task of talking about the book to the children. After children have a lot of experience with a book, they can be given classroom activities that incorporate it, such as dramatizing the book.

Dialogic reading is just children and adults having a conversation about a book. Children will enjoy dialogic reading more than traditional reading as long as the adult mixes up prompts with straight reading, varies questions and focus from reading to reading, and follows the child’s interest. Children shouldn’t be pushed with more prompts than they can handle happily. Keep it fun!