Being proficiently literate is essential to participate successfully in today’s information society. Interactive book reading (IBR) has been proven to be one of the most enduring and effective methods to foster children’s language and literacy development. Both the frequency and the quality of children’s contributions during IBR-activities are expected to be strongly related to language and literacy development (e.g. Dickinson & Tabors, 2001). Nevertheless, analysis of the available empirical literature on IBR reveals that the microstructure of this stimulating literacy activity was almost exclusively studied from the perspective of the adult’s input (e.g. Gonzales et al., 2014). Children’s input and adult/child interaction patterns during IBR remain underexplored.
Therefore, this study aims at disclosing both adult/child and peer interactions during IBR for first and second graders. 600 minutes of video-taped IBR-activity were divided in utterances as unit of analyses and coded using a theory-driven integrated coding-scheme focusing on the core components of IBR (e.g. Mol et al., 2009; van Kleeck et al., 1997): (a) asking questions, (b) hinting, (c) expounding vocabulary, (d) explaining content, (e) illustrating images, (f) linking experiences, (g) indicating book conventions, and (h) clarifying print knowledge. 20% of the utterances were double coded by two independent trained coders resulting in a good overall agreement (κ=.84, p <.00).
The presentation will report on analyses regarding the core components of IBR, whereby interaction patterns between adults and children and between children reciprocally are uncovered. Implications for teaching practice and further research optimizing IBR will be discussed
