What is dialogic reading?
Dialogic reading is shared reading where the adult asks questions and the child gradually becomes the storyteller. Psychologist Grover Whitehurst and colleagues showed in 1988 that one hour of training for parents led to children’s expressive language running six months or more ahead of children read to the usual way.
The study followed 29 children aged 21 to 35 months over a month (Whitehurst et al., 1988). The idea has since become a staple of early-years practice. The technique has two parts you can remember: PEER for what you do, and CROWD for what you ask.
The PEER method
- Prompt your child to say something about the page: “What’s the hedgehog doing?”
- Evaluate the answer: “Yes, she’s brushing her spines!”
- Expand it: “She’s brushing her little spines before she goes outside.”
- Repeat the prompt so your child can try the longer sentence.
Five kinds of questions (CROWD)
| Type | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Completion | Leave a gap for your child to fill | “Slow and steady wins the …” |
| Recall | Ask about what happened | “What did the bee forget to do in summer?” |
| Open-ended | Ask them to describe a picture | “Tell me what’s happening here.” |
| Wh- questions | What, where, who, why | “Why do you think he feels sad?” |
| Distancing | Connect the story to their life | “Have you ever spilled something on a drawing?” |
Why are picture books perfect for this?
Pictures give your child something to point at and talk about, and researchers found illustrated stories read aloud the sweet spot for young children: the pictures support understanding while the child’s imagination does the rest.
Source: Hutton et al., 2020. That is why Luna has no narration or animation on story pages: the voice and the questions are yours. Personalised stories help with the distancing questions too, because the hero already is your child.
How much should I ask at bedtime?
Less than in the daytime. At bedtime, two or three questions keep the story flowing without waking anyone up. Save the full PEER treatment for a re-read on the weekend, when the story is familiar and your child can take over the telling. Every read counts: children read to more at home show stronger brain activity for imagery and story understanding (Hutton et al., 2015), and one book a day adds about 290,000 words by kindergarten (Logan et al., 2019).
