Sample A: Cover Page of Thesis, Project, or Dissertation Proposal

Appendix K
Stony Brook Emergent Literacy Curriculum
Interactional Techniques
Traditional classroom shared reading has the teacher reading a story while the
children listen passively. The teacher can‘t read the story if children are interrupting; so
the operative rule becomes sit still and be quiet. Imagine how it would be if you wanted
to learn to fly an airplane but you weren‘t allowed to touch the controls. When children
share a picture book with a teacher, they are learning how to read. They need to touch the
controls. That means they need to talk about the book, to read the pictures and the
structure of the story to you. This emergent reading lays the foundation for formal
reading instruction in first grade.
The essence of dialogic reading is a reversal of roles between adult and child.
When most adults share a book with a preschooler, they read and the child listens. In
dialogic reading, the adult helps the child become the teller of the story. The adult
becomes the listener, the questioner, the audience for the child. No one can learn to play
the piano just by listening to someone else play. Likewise, no one can learn to read just
by listening to someone else read. Children learn most from books when they are actively
involved.
Dialogic reading makes the child the teller of the story, the reader of the book.
Children simply do not have enough opportunity for active responding in large groups.
Reading to a large group at one time is acceptable on the first occasion that a book is
introduced—the teacher will need to do the reading then in any case. Thereafter, the book
should be read with groups as small as possible. When groups exceed four or five
children, it becomes difficult for any single child to have enough opportunities to respond
actively to the book.
The fundamental reading technique in Dialogic Reading is the PEER sequence.
This is a short interaction between a child and the adult. The adult prompts the child to
say something about the book, evaluates the child‘s response, expands the child‘s
response by rephrasing and adding information to it, and repeats the prompt-evaluate
sequence to make sure that the child has learned from the expansion.
P rompt
E valuate
E xpand
R epeat
Except for the first reading of a book to children, PEER sequences should occur
on nearly every page. Sometimes you can read the written words on the page and then
prompt the child to say something. For many books, you should do less and less reading
of the written words in the book each time you read it. Leave more to the child.
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