Goals to Target During Shared Reading at Home

Shared book reading strategies not only enhance a child’s literacy development, but their language development as well. When reading aloud or along with your child, you can incorporate strategies to help your children learn new vocabulary, understand how to answer questions, practice articulation targets, and promote higher level thinking by drawing connections between characters and actions within the story. 

Utilizing shared reading strategies increases engagement in story time, as your child is actively participating in the story rather than just sitting back and listening. Research shows that being an active participant in the activity helps the brain process, learn, and remember the information.

Here are some tips you can use when participating in shared reading with your child:

Discuss key vocabulary words

• Having a discussion with your child about key vocabulary or unfamiliar vocabulary words before reading a story will support their comprehension of the story content.

Discuss story elements:

• Identifying the characters, setting, feelings, problem, actions and more within your shared book can help your child learn key elements of a story in order to support story re-tell or even personal narrative formulation.

Answer wh- questions:

• Providing your child with wh- questions to answer during a story teaches them new vocabulary words and also allows them to focus on key details of the story.

Articulation targets:

• Are you working on the /d/ sound with your child? Pick a book with plenty of words that contain this target and practice them as you read! For example, Dizzy the Dinosaur would be an excellent choice to practice /d/ articulation targets.

Infer and predict:

• When participating in shared reading, ask your child to predict future events in the book. This will allow them to make connections between information in the text to anticipate what will happen next. Predicting encourages children to think ahead and ask questions. It also allows them to actively interact with the text.

In conclusion, reading with your child can target a multitude of speech and language goals, beyond just literacy.

Stay tuned for more reading strategies you can use when engaging in shared reading at home.

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