ABSTRACT
Shared reading is a collaborative learning activity, based on research by Don Holdaway, that emulates and builds from the child’s experience with bedtime stories. In early childhood classrooms, it typically involves a teacher and a large group of children sitting closely together to read and rereading in unison carefully selected enlarged texts. The first purpose of shared reading is to provide children with an enjoyable reading experience. The second, equally important, purpose is to teach children systematically and explicitly how to be readers and writers themselves. A study of kindergarten children produced evidence that children move from forming stories in oral language structures to forming them in written language structures. These findings were replicated in other studies as well. Over time, as children request and reread favorite books, their questions and comments increase and become more interpretive and evaluative.
