What is Shared Book Reading?
Shared book reading, as the name suggests, involves the activity of an adult reading a book to a child and engaging in discussion about the story. This approach to reading has been well-established and greatly supported by research, with evidence that it helps to support early language skills, such as vocabulary, narrative and conversation skills, future reading ability, print awareness, grammatical development, and phonological awareness.
How do you do Shared Book Reading?
PEER Method
The process of shared book reading can involve the PEER method: Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, and Repeat.
- Prompt involves prompting the child to form expressions toward a particular element in the story;
- Evaluate is to provide a response to the child’s expression;
- Expand involves building upon the child’s expression to provide more information; and
- Repeat includes repeating the prompts with the new information that was added or repeating the child’s response.
CROWD Method — Types of Prompts
The CROWD method can be used to generate the prompts for the first step of the PEER method. This might include:
- Completion: having the child complete a common word or phrase in the story.
- Completion prompts provide children with information about the structure of language that is critical to later reading.
- Completion prompts are typically used in books with rhyming or repetitive phrases.
- E.g. “A told B, and B told _?”, “The bear ate cookies and _?”
- Recall: asking the child questions about what happened in a book they have already read.
- Recall prompts help children understand a story’s plot and to describe sequences of events.
- Recall prompts can be used at the end of a new book and at the beginnng of a book a child has read before.
- Using it at the end of a book or page can help summarise the story or main point(s).
- E.g. “What happened after the bell rang?”
- Using it at the beginning of a book that has been previously read can serve as a memory challenge for the child.
- E.g. “Can you tell me what happened to the caterpillar in this story?”
- This technique works well for nearly every kind of book, except alphabet books, and is best used with children ages 4 and 5.
- Open-ended: having the child talk about what is happening in the pictures in the books you read together.
- Open-ended prompts help children increase their expressive language, which can help them develop their vocabulary and narrative skills.
- E.g. “Tell me what is happening in this picture.”
- Open-ended prompts work best with pictures that have rich detailed instructions.
- Wh- questions: having the child answer who, what, where, when, why, and how questions about the story and its pictures.
- Wh- questions teach children new vocabulary by repeating words in the book.
- Best used with children ages 4 and 5.
- E.g. You may ask “What’s the name of this?” while pointing to an object in a book; or ask “Who is dancing?”
- Distancing: asking the child to relate the pictures or words to their own experiences.
- Distancing prompts help children form a bridge between books and the real world around them.
- They can also help children with their vocabulary, conversational skills and narrative skills.
- Best used with children ages 4 and 5.
- E.g. When reading a book with a picture of animals in a zoo, you might say something like, “Remember when we went to the zoo last week. Which of these animals did we see there?”
- Books with rich, detailed pictures and are interesting to the child are the most suitable to use with this method. Always follow the child’s interest when choosing and sharing books.
Why Is Shared Book Reading Useful?
The process of shared book reading is believed to be helpful as it provides opportunities for behaviours that are linked to positive language outcomes. These might include:
- Child-directed speech with rich vocabulary and sentence structures: Shared book reading tends to involve adults using speech that is richer in varied vocabulary and sentence structures compared to play-based interactions, while still maintaining an engaging tone. This can therefore promote vocabulary acquisition and sentence structure learning.
- Joint attention: The shared focus on the book and its contents helps promote joint attention between the adult and child, which maintains the child’s interest, boosting attention and motivation to communicate.
- Encouraging responsiveness: Shared reading provides opportunities for adults to respond directly and appropriately to the child’s expressions, fostering conversational turn-taking, which may have positive effects on the child’s social communication and interactions.
- Specific language-boosting techniques: Shared reading offers a natural context for adults to use techniques such as:
- Expanding: Restating or adding more detail to what the child says.
- Recasting: Rephrasing a child’s incorrect or incomplete utterance correctly.
- Asking open-ended questions: Questions that encourage more than a one-word answer, prompting the child to elaborate.
These interactive elements are seen as the potential “ingredients” that make shared book reading valuable for language development.
Are there any books in particular suitable for Shared Book Reading?
There is, in fact, no hard and fast rule to choose what book to read together. Books can be chosen based on themes or a child’s interest, as long as the child is engaged and that parent and child can make meaningful interactions with the book. For starters, some of these books may be great for the little ones.
For 0 to 3-year-olds
- Ollie Feels Fine by Tony Yuly
- Ollie the octopus has a lot of feelings and he struggles to understand them. One especially busy, emotional day, Ollie becomes overwhelmed by all of his feelings. But with the help of his good friend, Stella the starfish, Ollie is reassured and able to feel that he is ok, and that it is fine to have so many feelings.
- Ollie the octopus has a lot of feelings and he struggles to understand them. One especially busy, emotional day, Ollie becomes overwhelmed by all of his feelings. But with the help of his good friend, Stella the starfish, Ollie is reassured and able to feel that he is ok, and that it is fine to have so many feelings.
- Making Friends: A Lift-The-Flap Book About Friendship by Mandy Archer & Louise Forshaw
- Making Friends helps curious preschoolers learn about being a good friend and making new ones. Featuring friendly child characters and familiar situations, this book shows how friends interact and how to be inclusive, make new friends and have fun.
- Making Friends helps curious preschoolers learn about being a good friend and making new ones. Featuring friendly child characters and familiar situations, this book shows how friends interact and how to be inclusive, make new friends and have fun.
- One More Time: A Story about Perseverance by Nancy Loewen & Hazel Quintanilla
- Whee! Whoa! Whoops! Ready to try again? One More Time introduces and develops the idea of perseverance for children aged 1-3. A boy gets a beautiful, blue scooter for his birthday. At first he falls, but after about ‘a bazillion’ tries, he learns the benefits of perseverance.
For 4 to 6-year-olds
- No Biggy! : A Story About Overcoming Everyday Obstacles by Elycia Rubin & Josh Talbot
- Getting frustrated is part of life! And, whether Kiki is working on squeezing toothpaste right onto her toothbrush, getting the zipper to slide all the way up her jacket, or spreading cream cheese on a bagel, she learns that taking a deep breath, saying “No Biggy!” and trying again helps manage frustration.
- Getting frustrated is part of life! And, whether Kiki is working on squeezing toothpaste right onto her toothbrush, getting the zipper to slide all the way up her jacket, or spreading cream cheese on a bagel, she learns that taking a deep breath, saying “No Biggy!” and trying again helps manage frustration.
- Giraffe Problems by Jory John & Lane Smith
- Just when Edward has exhausted his neck hiding options and is about to throw in the towel, a turtle swoops in (well, ambles in, very slowly) and helps him understand that his neck has a purpose, and looks excellent in a bow tie.
- Just when Edward has exhausted his neck hiding options and is about to throw in the towel, a turtle swoops in (well, ambles in, very slowly) and helps him understand that his neck has a purpose, and looks excellent in a bow tie.
- The Crayons’ Book of Feelings by Drew Daywalt & Oliver Jeffers
- Everyone knows the crayons love to color, but did you know that crayons have feelings too? Sometimes they are happy and sometimes they feel downright blue. From the creative minds behind The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home, comes a fun board book to help young readers understand and express their feelings.
- Everyone knows the crayons love to color, but did you know that crayons have feelings too? Sometimes they are happy and sometimes they feel downright blue. From the creative minds behind The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home, comes a fun board book to help young readers understand and express their feelings.
Conclusion:
Shared book reading has been proven to be an effective way of boosting early language development in children. It is accessible, easy, and engaging, with simple methods to follow. Nonetheless, it is important to note that while these methods serve as useful recommendations, they are mostly guides to approaching shared book reading. Parents can adopt these strategies directly or incorporate them into any existing methods they might already employ. Ultimately, the best method is whatever suits each individual child’s interests and engages them the most.
References
Looi, L. (2025, March 26). Shared Book Reading. Retrieved from https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/reading/2025/03/26/shared-book-reading/
Raising Readers. (n.d.). The Dialogic Reading Method from Read Together, Talk Together. Retrieved from
https://www.raising-readers.org/media/cms/The_Dialogic_Reading_Method_F760046DFDFD4.pdf
NLB. (2025). Raise a Reader: Suggested Reads. Retrieved from https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/site/discovereads/preschoolers/reading-recommendations/booklists#booklists
