Facilitating children's emergent literacy using shared reading: a comparison of two models

This paper investigates early home literacy practices and their influence on preschool children's literacy and reading development. In particular, two recently developed Australian home literacy interventions are reviewed that were based on a parent shared reading and dialogic reading framework. While both interventions facilitated preschool children's reading development and parent involvement, each intervention had a different focus. One of the interventions was designed for children with language delays and it concentrated on motivating book reading. The second intervention was designed for children with a family history of reading disability, and this intervention concentrated more on children's alphabetical and phonological awareness development, along with home reading. The strategies used for both interventions have the potential to be incorporated into mainstream early childhood literacy education and tuition.