Shared reading is the process of reading a book aloud to a child and scaffolding their engagement with the text. Labeling words and pictures, modeling left-to-right reading, modeling inflection and intonation, and asking questions all contribute to early literacy development (NELP, 2008).
Early literacy research has long supported the practice of reading to young children to develop their literacy skills. Some of the skills shared reading supports include print knowledge, vocabulary development, phonological awareness, and oral language development. The National Early Literacy Panel is the largest review of research on early literacy development to date. They found that shared reading activities had the largest effect on oral language development (NELP, 2008). This strategy isn’t just for vocal-verbal students. Shared reading presents an amazing opportunity for our learners with AAC devices to develop language, too. So, how do we go about doing it?
Shared Reading and AAC
In a study conducted at Penn State, teachers were trained on how to provide effective modeling during shared reading activities with students who use AAC devices. The results speak for themself: “Before intervention, the children who required AAC were taking a mean of only three turns in 10-minute story-reading interactions (range 1–10 turns). After adult partners implemented the interaction strategies, the children increased their rates of turn-taking to a mean of 40 turns in 10 minutes (range 18–59)” (Light & Kent-Walsh, 2003).
There was also a significant impact on semantic concepts demonstrated before and after the intervention: “Before instruction, they expressed a mean of three different concepts in 10 minutes of story reading. After instruction with the adult partners, the children expressed a mean of approximately 30 different concepts in the 10-minute interactions (range 11–64)” (Light & Kent-Walsh, 2003).
Best Practice Strategies
So, what were these effective practices for shared reading, and how can we implement them into shared reading with our students? Let’s talk about it!
1. Model with the student’s AAC system.
Many of us know this famous statistic from Jane Korsten: if our AAC users had access to modeling in speech sessions twice a week for 30 minutes at a time, it would take them 84 years to reach the same language proficiency as a typically developing 18-month-old (Korsten, 2011). The key to overcoming this is modeling, as many times as possible in as many settings as possible. Shared reading is a great way to incorporate modeling or aided language input into our instruction. Shared reading provides many different ways to creatively model new vocabulary and core words. Participating in shared reading helps show students where new and relevant vocabulary is in their AAC programs.
The key to modeling is to model without expectation. This means we are not requiring students to copy or imitate our models. We also don’t want to stop the engaging storytelling part if they “aren’t looking”. Students are still taking in your instruction even if their eyes don’t follow your fingers every time. Again, we wouldn’t withhold a toy or playing with a toddler if they didn’t hear our every word. We wouldn’t do the same with our AAC users.
The focus of modeling in shared reading should be on the most relevant words. For example, take this sentence from The Very Hungry Caterpillar: “One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and-pop!-out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar.” The words I would model in the sentence are “morning, sun, up, egg, tiny/small, hungry, and/or caterpillar.” The small words- “one, the, and, and of”- don’t need to be modeled and are going to take too long to find. These are also words that are going to be repeated in the story. Focusing on them will give you a better bang for your instructional buck.
2. Provide ample wait time
Wait time was shown to be a crucial component to increasing student engagement during the shared reading intervention (Light & Kent-Walsh, 2003). It’s detrimental to move between pages too quickly or not to allow students to follow your model. In doing so, you are taking away crucial opportunities for them to practice and grow their skills. It might sound silly, but you might need to count in your head “5 Mississippi” or more to train yourself to wait longer!
Many of our students who use AAC devices have full or partial apraxia. This means that their brain-mouth or brain-body connection experiences some level of impairment. Saying what they want to say or using their body in the way they want to is difficult or impossible. Wait time allows them to work through that disconnect and produce the sound or action they want to. You may be surprised at how much engagement and interaction you’re missing out on by moving too quickly!
3. Ask open ended questions
Imagine you go to another country by plane. The safety demonstration is in another language, but there are enough visuals that you get the gist of what they are saying. Imagine if, after every instruction, the flight attendant turned to you and asked you a yes or no question to test to see if you understood her demonstration? Not only would it defeat the purpose of the demonstration, but you’d likely fail because you’re either learning or not familiar at all with the language of instruction.
The same is true for our AAC users! We want to avoid yes/no questions in shared reading as much as possible to prevent what is supposed to be a fun activity from becoming a pop quiz. Students will respond to models or engage when they are ready, and open-ended questions are an invitation to do so.
Students might need help answering open-ended questions, especially if new vocabulary is involved. Opening up the relevant page on their device and modeling how you would answer the question is a great way to get the ball rolling.
Some examples of open ended questions include:
- What looks interesting on this page to you?
- I see a ____, what do you see?
- I can point to the words in this sentence, do you see other words on the page?
- Look! The letter B, can you find more B’s?
- There are so many colors/animals/foods, which ones do you see?
- How do you think they feel?
- What do you think is going to happen next?
4. Respond to communication attempts.
When a student points to a page, stares intently, laughs at a line, or shows a changed facial expression, they are communicating! Our job is to recognize those attempts and expand them into learning opportunities during shared reading. For example, if you notice a student staring intently at a particular picture on the page, model as much as possible about that picture and invite them to engage with the page, too. Even if they don’t use their device, modeling about an interest is an opportunity to teach them new vocabulary they may not have known before.
Some students might vocalize, get up, or stim during the shared reading activity. Our natural inclination might be to ask them to pay attention, but engagement is the point of this activity! That means if students interrupt you, let them! It’s a chance to model, get a back-and-forth interaction going, and capitalize on their interest in a subject. This isn’t about getting through as much modeling as possible or as many pages in the book as possible; it’s about increasing our students’ interest in texts and getting them communicating more. Forcing a student to sit through a read-aloud is an easy way to make reading aversive.
Picking a Shared Reading Book
When I’m looking to use modeling in a shared reading activity, the book I pick makes a big difference in the success of the activity. Here are the criteria I use to select a good book:
- Repeated words or phrases, especially if they are core words
- Books about colors, shapes, numbers, or letters
- Books that are also sing alongs
- Sound effect books
- Related to the student’s special interest
If you need a list of books to try, I have one in my free resource library that you can access here! I compiled my tried-and-true favorites for shared reading activities with AAC users.
Need more help figuring out how to do this effectively with your students? Drop me a note!