This article introduces the results of a research survey that involved 443 preschool and classroom teachers. The objective of the investigation was to discover teachers' views on making picture book reading a part of the teaching process, how picture book reading was incorporated, and how a productive visual response to a picture book was…

Read-alouds are a frequent practice in early childhood classrooms and provide great potential for developing literacy skills for young learners including vocabulary, comprehension, text structure awareness, visual literacy, and fluency. Yet, any potential benefit of read-alouds depends on how the teacher enacts a read-aloud, particularly in…

This study investigated Chinese parents' experiences of reading English storybooks to their preschool children. While the spread of English as a global language is associated with an increasing emphasis on English education, few studies have examined its impact on the early home literacy practices in non-English speaking countries. With the most…

In April 2020, Scholastic, together with YouGov, conducted a survey to explore aspirations, family attitudes and behaviors around reading in China. The key findings of this research, based on a nationally representative sample of 1,210 parents and children, including 509 parents of children aged 0-5; and 701 parents of children aged 6-17, are…

This qualitative study examined a class of 20 five-year-old Korean children's literary sessions that were composed of whole-group read-alouds of fairy/folk tales and their parodies, including discussion and follow-up activities based on critical literacy practices. Over a 15-week period, multiple sources of data including observations, open-ended…

Experts in children's literature and child development value complexity in the language, socio-emotional content, and structure of books, yet little is known regarding parents' attitudes towards these aspects. The study thus examined how parents' gender, education, and profession, children's age and gender, and frequency of parent-child reading…

This study aimed to examine which genres parents are reading to children and for themselves. Furthermore, it aimed to examine mothers' and fathers' shared reading strategies for different book genres in relation to children's language and literacy development. Parents shared a narrative and an expository book with their preschool-aged children.…

The enquiries in this study were directed towards the reading of children's literature in preschool with the aim of describing and analysing how read-alouds were carried out in 39 preschools in the northern and southern parts of Sweden. How often were read-alouds performed? How long were they? How was literature chosen? Who initiated the…

This paper explores the impact of a Spoken Word Education Programme (SWEP hereafter) on young people's engagement with poetry in a group of schools in London, UK. It does so with reference to the secondary Discourses of school-based learning and the Spoken Word community, an artistic "community of practice" into which they were being…

This study investigated the influence of book genre (narrative or didactic) on mothers' language use during a book sharing interaction with their 18- to 25-month-olds. Mother-child dyads were videotaped sharing both a narrative and a didactic book, adapted from two commercially available books, and matched in terms of length, quantity of text, and…

Bookreading has proven to be beneficial for children's language and literacy development (e.g. Bus, Van Ijzendoorn and Pellegrini, 1995; Fletcher and Reese, 2005; Mol and Bus, 2011a). Families in Western countries are often advised to read to their young children, and many parents appear to be aware of the positive effects of bookreading. However,…

In fall 2015, Scholastic, in conjunction with YouGov, conducted a survey to explore family attitudes and behaviours in India around reading books for fun. The key findings of this research, which are presented in this report, are based on a sample of 1,752 parents and children, including 350 parents of children aged 0-5; 701 parents of children…

Paired Reading is a peer tutoring programme in secondary schools which trains teachers to support and encourage the regular tutoring of Year 7 pupils (aged 11-12 years) by Year 9 pupils (aged 13-14 years). The Paired Reading programme aims to improve pupils' general literacy in addition to speaking and listening skills. This is achieved by pupils…

Suggests that some Australian schools in the 1980s took up too enthusiastically what may be called the Effortless Theory of Learning to Read. Describes how Paired Reading can work and what can go wrong with such instruction. (RS)

This resource book is intended to help parents identify good books for their children by offering a list of the best contemporary Australian books for children and by explaining ways to recognize what qualities to look for in new and unfamiliar books. The first section of the book answers some common questions about why books and reading aloud are…