Dialogic Reading: Supporting Comprehension Through Shared Reading
- jessicabunnell2
- Sep 1, 2025
- 4 min read
How supporting a conversation about the story can support literacy and language...plus the prompts to help you practice it!
How can we support understanding (comprehension) for our kiddos while they read? Let’s talk about it! Before we dive into some super simple strategies that we can use to support reading, let’s talk about the link between literacy and speech and language skills. If you missed our blog post about early literacy and supporting literacy skills from a young age, check out that blog post from our amazing literacy specialist here! Speech and language skills such as phonological awareness (sound awareness) and oral language skills lay the foundation for strong literacy skills! Both reading specialists and speech-language pathologists share the goal of nurturing strong readers, writers, and communicators! With that, let’s chat about how we can promote engagement during shared reading and support both communication and literacy!
What is dialogic reading and how does it support development?
Dialogic reading is an evidence based strategy for supporting comprehension (understanding of the text) during shared storybook reading…let’s dive in and learn about what this strategy is and how it supports development!
What is dialogic reading? Dialogic reading is guided shared reading between the adult and child that is focused on boosting comprehension through supporting the child’s active participation in a dialogue about the story.
How does dialogic reading support skill development? Dialogic reading facilitates active participation during reading, helping to increase vocabulary, reinforce language concepts from the story, and increase exposure to narrative development (language-boosting superpowers!) while supporting a deeper understanding of the text (literacy-boosting superpowers!).
How does dialogic reading work?
Dialogic reading is child-centered rather than directed by the adult, meaning it uses guided questions to help the child think critically about the story. Not sure how to support that dialogue or what questions to ask? This is where dialogic reading prompts come in! The ‘PEER’ sequence supports a short interaction between the child and the adult that helps the child to become the story teller and expands what the child understands about the story.
The adult uses PEER to help support the child in their active dialogue about the story.
P (prompt)- the adult prompts the kiddo to say something about the book (using the question prompts below)
E (evaluate)- the adult evaluates their response
E (expand)- the adult rephrases and adds information to expand the child’s original response
R (repeat) - the adult repeats the prompt to check in for understanding
Here is how PEER might look during the story ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ |
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Level of Question Prompts:
When we think about asking questions to help promote a conversation around the story, we can identify three different levels of questions!
Level 1 Questions: These questions are those that ask the child to think about what is being read in the text or what can be seen in the photos. These are basic “wh” questions (who, what, where, when).
Level 2 Questions: These questions go a step deeper and help the child to provide feedback about something in the story. These questions are open ended and encourage the child to think deeper about the meaning of the text.
Level 3 Questions: These questions are more complex and can help the child to identify connections between the text and their own experiences.
Types of Question Prompts (plus how to remember them):
We can use the acronym CROWD to help us remember the types of questions to ask when we are using the dialogic reading strategy...
C: Completion question (this is a fill-in-the blank prompt)
E.g., We are going on a… CHILD: treasure hunt
R: Recall question- this type of question asks the child to recall something that happened in the story
E.g., What happened when the bear got to the water?
O: Open-ended question: this type of question allows the child to critically think about their answer and find deeper meanings
E.g., Why do you think the bear didn’t go to the tree first?
W: WH question: this type of question starts with ‘who, what, where, when, why’
E.g., Where did the bear go first?
D: Distance- this type of question helps the child think deeply about the characters and story elements and how they might relate their own lives/experiences
E.g., How do you think Sally felt on her first day of Kindergarten?
Now that we know these strategies, boosting speech and language skills can be as simple as using the PEERS formula and the CROWD question prompts to have a dialogue about the story...and encourage language and literacy growth while we do! We love incorporating language boosting strategies into routines and activities that you are ALREADY doing at home! Think about a consistent time during your day or evening where you and your child are reading together and practice adding in some dialogue by using these strategies. Then watch as your child’s understanding of the story and language concepts grows!
PS: Is your child struggling with reading comprehension or literacy skills? We can help! We have an amazing educator on our team who specializes in literacy and can help support those early literacy skills! Feel free to reach out to us and book a free call here!
Sources & more information:
Pillinger, C., and Vardy, E. J. (2022) The story so far: A systematic review of the dialogic reading literature. Journal of Research in Reading, 45: 533– 548.
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