By: Brooke Stoyak M.A., CCC-SLP
What is Dialogic Book Reading & Why it works!
- During a Dialogic Book Reading, an adult becomes the “teller” of a story. The adult takes on the role of actor, listener and questioner for the child. How adults read to children is just as important as how often we read to children.
- Dialogic Book Reading has been proven to drastically improve language development. Children that are read to using Dialogic Book Reading techniques, can develop new language skills in just a few weeks. Children have been known to enjoy Dialogic Book Readings more than traditional readings. Follow your child’s interest, keep it fun and keep it engaging!
How to prompt children:
- Completion Prompts:
Leave a blank at the end of a sentence and have your child attempt to fill it in. You can use this type of prompt with a rhyme book or a book that has repetitive phrases. You could say, “Humpty dumpty sat on a wall, humpty dumpty had a great _____”, and let the child fill in the blank with the word “fall”. These prompts give children information about the structure of language that is critical for later reading skills.
- Recall Prompts:
These prompts are questions about what has happened in the book and what has already been read to your child. For example, you could say, “Can you tell me what happened to the little blue truck in the story?”. Recall prompts can help children understand sequences of events, feelings of characters and the story plot. You can use these prompts throughout the entire storyline of a book.
- Open-ended Prompts:
These prompts focus on the pictures in a book. You can use these prompts with rich and visually appealing pictures in story books. You could say, “Tell me what is happening in this picture”. This helps promote expressive language development and attention to detail.
- WH- Prompts:
These prompts target the main “WH” questions: who, where, what, when, why and how. You could say, “What is the name of the boy?”. WH-questions help teach children new vocabulary.
- Distancing Prompts:
These prompts ask children to relate what they are seeing in pictures or words in a book, to their outside experiences. You could say, “Remember when we went to the zoo last week? Which of these animals did we see there?” This helps children form a “bridge” from books to the real world and also helps to target conversational turn-taking and narrative skills.