Interactive reading aloud to Israeli first graders: Its contribution to literacy development

THREE ISSUES were examined in this study: (a) how reading to a first-grade class of children requiring enhancement (who may be identifiable as socially and culturally challenged) affects their achievement in decoding, reading comprehension, and storytelling; (b) how reading stories out of a series written by one author affects their achievement as compared with reading isolated stories; and, (c) how reading different types of literature affects the amount of voluntary reading. Fifteen Israeli first-grade classes (339 participants) were randomly divided into four treatment groups, three experimental groups and one control group. The first group (four classes) listened to stories (published in school readers) by different authors. The second group (four classes) listened to stories by one author. The third group (three classes) listened in installments to a multiple-volume series of stories written by the same author as the second group. The control group (4 classes) engaged in regular activities (worksheets, drawing, pasting, etc.). The teachers of the three experimental groups were asked to read interactively to their students, that is, to interact with their students before, during, and after reading in order to help them to understand the story. They were to do this during the last 20 minutes of the day, five times a week, for 6 months. The findings indicated that classroom story-reading to first-grade students led them to increases in decoding, reading comprehension, and picture storytelling. Among the various types of treatments, reading by teachers from a series of stories in installments was shown to have the greatest effect on reading achievement on the extent of reading for pleasure and on the quantity of books purchased for leisure reading. The findings suggested that exposure to a series of stories initiates a process (a magic secret), which stimulates young readers to reread these books.