Why Buddy Reading - Academic Evidence

Academic Evidence of Reading to Children

1. Why Buddy Reading:

    The everyday demands of the classroom limit the time the teacher and other adults can spend working alongside a young child with a book. Consequently, some schools have initiated schemes such as buddy reading (Cunningham and Allington, Classroom that work: They can all read and write)

2. About Reading Fluency:
   (1). Reading fluency is important to reading comprehension. Instruction in the form of guided repeated oral reading can help students improve their reading fluency. (McCardle et al., Reading Research In Action: A Teacher’s Guide for Student Success)

   (2). Fluency helps enable reading comprehension by freeing cognitive resources for interpretation, but it is also implicated in the process of comprehension as it necessarily includes preliminary interpretive steps. (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD])

   (3). Reading fluency facilitates and supports reading comprehension. (Snow et al., Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children)

   (4). Reading connected text, not isolated works, can improve both fluency and comprehension. Practice reading and specific feedback on that reading are crucial elements in improving students’ reading fluency. (NICHD)

3. About Picture Books in the age of new technology

…questions arise about whether the literacies of traditional texts are adequate for digital-electronic technologies. Clearly, children need to acquire knowledge about the visual semiotic system if they are to make meaning from paper texts. This is particularly the case for picture-books, where the images increasingly play a role in the construction of meaning. (Janet, Talking Beyond the Page)

4. Preparing for a story reading
Stories need to be introduced, presented, recommended, talked over and savoured together. (Wade, Reading for Real)

5. Activities based on reading stories (Campbell, Reading Stories with Young Children)
-role play
-drawing and writing
-making books
-arts and crafts
-making and using puppets
-songs and rhymes

References:

1. Robin Campbell, Reading Stories with Young Children

2. Peggy McCardle, etc., Reading Research in Action

3. Janet Evans, Talking Beyond the Page