The votes have been verified and counted. The daily book selection ritual is complete, and the children sit, eagerly awaiting to listen to and join in with a familiar, firm favourite. 

Their teacher shares the book and asks a couple of questions to prompt the children’s recall of what they already know and remember about the story. With appropriate intonation and gestures, she begins to read, and the children take her cues to join in, excitedly reading parts of the familiar text in chorus.

Reading stories to children is a well-established practice in the early years. But how often are books read with children, in ways that ensure they are truly active participants in the process?

There’s strong evidence to show that interactive reading can have a positive impact on both children’s language and their literacy development. However, the research also suggests that the impact of this approach depends on the choices adults make when they engage children in shared reading.

So, what can teachers do to make sure that children are getting the most out of story time? 

How can we use interactive reading to boost early literacy?

Developed as part of the Education Endowment Foundation’s work supporting the DfE’s Stronger Practice Hubs, The Early Years Evidence Store identifies practices that early years educators can use to boost early development. 

As part of this, the new early literacy theme outlines strategies practitioners can apply during interactive reading to maximise its impact. 

1. Use text features as performance cues

A really simple approach is to label features of print and text and use these as performance cues to model how to read aloud with expression, encouraging children to do the same.  

While reading aloud to the children, draw attention to the words in the text, pointing to each one as you read it. You might talk about the direction of the text, the spaces between words, capital letters at the start of each sentence, and full stops at the end.

Show the children how text size is sometimes used to give us an idea of how to read a word aloud. If a word is written in large print, this encourages us to give it emphasis - “crash!” - whereas if small print is used, this suggests we should lower our voices and whisper - “as quiet as a mouse”.

2. Model your thinking

It’s helpful for teachers to model thinking aloud during reading, verbalising inferences and sharing thought processes with the children. Encourage them to share their own thoughts, too, by predicting or recalling what might happen next.

For example, a teacher is sharing a new book with Osi in the book corner, and they are co-reading together. The teacher pauses as she reads for Osi to predict the next word or phrase.

When Osi is unsure, the teacher draws attention to the illustrations and surrounding text to help Osi fill the missing word gap.

3. Use careful questioning  

Questions help to engage children in making inferences or “reading” parts of the book. It’s important to tailor these to the different developmental stages of the children in the group.

You can ask a “what” question to draw attention to a key part of the story. For example, “What might scare the boy?” to help them notice a tiny mouse hiding at the bottom of the picture.

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You can then pose “what”, “when” and “where” questions to others and encourage them to predict what the character is going to do or where they are going.

Finally, use “how” and “why” questions with children to encourage inference-making and reflect on events happening in the story.

4. Engage in co-reading

Co-reading is where the adult and child read together or take turns to read. This works best with a favourite storybook that you have read to the children many times before.

Ask children to chant the book along with you, from memory, encouraging expressions and gestures. The adult should turn the pages of the book and point to the text as you co-read. 
 
Reading books with children is a well-established, treasured element of early years literacy practice. But with these strategies, explained and illustrated in the EEF’s Early Years Evidence Store, we can squeeze the maximum benefit from the time we spend sharing books with the children in our care. 

Sinead McMahon is an early years specialist at the Education Endowment Foundation

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