The Benefits of Shared Story Book Reading
Research has consistently demonstrated the benefits of parents and their children reading together at home. The home is a safe and trusted place in which children are naturally eager to participate in activities with their parents. Children are also particularly responsive to encouragement made by their parents. Furthermore, the emotional closeness that arises as books are enjoyed together, adds an additional quality to the learning experience. A child’s imagination is unleashed as a parent conveys the excitement and magic of an unfolding story.
Shared storybook reading between parent and child therefore often makes for a natural and productive learning experience. A home environment in which parents actively introduce their children to books has been shown to nurture the type of literacy skills and understanding that leads to the later acquisition of literacy.
This kind of shared experience with a trusted parent is believed to further support the acquisition of literacy by encouraging interest and motivation towards books and reading. Studies demonstrate that children who are read to from a very young age tend to display greater interest in reading when they are older.
Shared reading and engagement with the child. Studies suggest that it is the quality of the shared reading experience that determines its effectiveness in nurturing literacy skills. More crucial than whether the parents read to the child every day or less often, is allowing the child to actively participate in the telling of the story.
This occurs when a parent ensures that the child actually participates in the unfolding story. A parent can ask questions to focus their children’s attention, to check comprehension, and to elicit labels for objects and descriptive attributes, such as colour, size and number. Children can also be asked for explanations of behaviour, predictions, and connections between events or objects in the story and those in the child’s own life.
Tags: Benefits, Reading, Story Book