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Reading Together
Reading Together is a research-based workshop programme for parents, children and teachers. It is designed to help parents support their children's reading at home more effectively. The programme was developed as an action research project by Jeanne Biddulph during 1982 and 1983. Reading Together is low-cost and requires only five hours of teacher contact time, spread over seven weeks.
Reading Together builds partnerships between parent and teacher, parent and parent, parent and child, and parent and librarian (and similarly builds multi-partnerships for teachers, librarians, and children). This approach can bridge cultures and reduce negative effects for children whose culture differs from that of the school.
Reading Together has proven a cost-effective intervention to support parents in assisting their children with reading.
Robinson, Hohepa, and Lloyd, 2009, page 162
Evidence of effectiveness
Key findings from initial and ongoing research studies of implementation of Reading Together include:
- statistically significant and sustained gains in students’ levels of reading comprehension over time
- positive and constructive changes in parents’ relationships with their children,
- positive shifts in children’s independent reading and in relationships between teachers and parents.
- enhanced confidence and independence of children and parents/whānau (including the use of community libraries).
The workshop programme was originally designed to provide additional help for children with reading difficulties, but the suggestions and helping strategies are also useful for parents of competent readers. The strategies have been found to be effective with children aged 5 to 15 across a range of socio-economic and ethnic groups.
Since 1982, it has been successfully implemented on a voluntary basis by many teachers across schools in various parts of New Zealand.
Resources available
The Reading Together resources, which schools can order from the Reading Together website, include:
- Reading Together: Workshop Leader’s Handbook – a comprehensive handbook that describes the background to the programme (including its research base), sets out the theoretical understandings which underpin it, and explains the processes for organising and running the workshops and for gathering feedback and reporting on the programme
- Reading Together: Suggestions for Helping Children with Reading – a booklet for parents and whānau
- Brock: A ‘Reading Book’ for Adults – a booklet that helps adults to understand what it’s like to be a beginning reader
- A set of jokes and riddles for parents and children to share.
Workshops
This programme consists of four workshops, held over six or seven weeks.
In Workshop 1, the teacher, as workshop leader, explains and demonstrates ways of helping children with reading at home and then engages the parents in discussion about the suggestions for helping and the demonstration.
In Workshop 2, parents and children engage in activities which help them to check the difficulty level of materials for the individual child and then to read books that are “just right” together during the workshop,
Workshop 3 helps the parents understand more about how children learn to read and how to help children overcome problems in their reading.
After Workshop 3, there is a period of four weeks when the parents and children continue reading together at home, using the workshop suggestions.
In Workshop 4, the parents have opportunities to share their experiences, develop further understandings, give feedback, and look ahead together.
Further information
Further information about the history and effectiveness of Reading Together can be found on pages 162–164 of Robinson, Hohepa, and Lloyd, 2009, and on the Reading Together website.
Key features of the Reading Together programme and related research findings are detailed in a 2009 document available for download on the Reading Together website.
The Reading Together website also provides ordering information.