Enriched Interactive Reading for Multilingual Children: Techniques and Resources

Enhanced Interactive Reading: What is it?

Enhanced interactive reading is a method where you don't just passively read a book to a child. Instead, it involves active interaction between the child and the adult. It's about enriching the reading experience by using open-ended questions, comments, extensions, and turn-taking. It also incorporates visual and tactile aids to make the experience more immersive and engaging.

Key Components of Enhanced Interactive Reading

• Print Awareness: Understanding the functions, conventions, and forms of print. Learning reading direction, the function of the book title, and differentiating between uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Literary Language: Exposing students to richer and more diverse language. Introducing words and expressions specific to literature that children may not hear in everyday spoken language.
• Inferences from Texts: Encouraging children to make predictions and develop their oral comprehension. Stimulating their ability to make connections between the text and their own experiences.
• Phonological Awareness: Working on non-words and manipulating sounds orally and in writing. Developing skills such as segmenting words into syllables, identifying initial sounds in words, and categorizing rhymes.

Techniques Used

Open-Ended Questions

While reading, ask open-ended questions that encourage the child to think and elaborate on their answers. For example, ask "Why do you think the character did that?" or "What do you think will happen next?"

Extensions

If the child responds with a simple sentence, enrich that sentence. For example, if the child says "dog," you can respond, "Yes, it's a big brown dog running in the park."

Reiterations

Repeat the child's responses to reinforce their learning. If the child says, "She's eating an apple," you can repeat and add, "Yes, she's eating a red and juicy apple."

Visual and Tactile Aids

Use images, objects, or gestures to illustrate concepts. If the book talks about an apple, show a real apple or an image to make the concept concrete. Many other visual aids can also be used like the ones I developed for practitioners that are invaluable in my practice to support comprehension.

Why Use It With Multilingual Children?

In speech therapy, especially with multilingual children, enhanced interactive reading offers several advantages:

• Vocabulary Development: Introducing and reinforcing new words in multiple languages.
• Improved Comprehension: Helping children make connections between words and their meanings in various contexts.
• Encouraging Communication: Fostering interaction and verbal exchange, essential for acquiring new languages.
• Strengthening Narrative Skills: Working on children's ability to tell stories and organize their ideas coherently.

A Practical Resource for You: 5 Enhanced Interactive Readings

For additional stimulation activities, I highly recommend the resource 5 Enhanced Interactive Readings. It offers various stimulation activities for kindergarteners or early first graders. It's a simple and easy-to-use resource that will allow you to stimulate language, print awareness, and phonological awareness in young learners.

With this resource, you can work with:

• I am terrible by Élise Gravel
• The wolf who wanted to change his color by Orianne Lallemand
• The wrench by Élise Gravel
• The cave by Rob Hodgson
• Fafounet goes camping by Louise D'aoust

These books are not provided with the material; you'll need to get them from the library or a bookstore. This resource is ideal for interventions in kindergarten, first grade, or for individual or small-group interventions.

Why take my training?

If you find these techniques useful and wish to deepen your skills, I have designed a training specifically for specialized educators and language stimulation practitioners. This training will provide you with the necessary tools to effectively integrate enhanced interactive reading into your interventions, while mastering the specific challenges of multilingual clients.