Posted: March 18, 2026
"Read it again!" This excited refrain is familiar to many preschool educators. Children love to hear and talk about their favorite books. Early care and education professionals play an important role when they intentionally support children's language and literacy development by encouraging and scaffolding language and literacy experiences through interactive book reading.
A teacher reads a book to a diverse group of preschool-aged children. They sit on the floor, smiling and looking at an open book. One child sits on the teacher's lap and points to the pages.
The development of preschoolers' language and literacy skills builds a foundation for learning. Surrounding young children with meaningful language opportunities supports growth in all developmental areas, including cognitive, social, and emotional. Language interactions serve as a vehicle for preschoolers to talk with peers and adults, identify and talk about their feelings, problem-solve, and think in more complex ways. The language interactions adults have with children are a pathway to extend and expand on children’s communication, responses, and thinking skills. Interactive book reading supports vocabulary development, comprehension, and flexible thinking.
One of the most important features of interactive reading is to include preschoolers in all aspects of the story. This means reading with children and having conversations about the story, the characters, what happens, and how children's experiences relate to something in the story. Interactive reading is different than reading a story straight through without allowing children any time for conversation or to ask or answer questions. Interactive reading engages children and fosters interest in reciprocal, or back-and-forth, conversations.
Eight Strategies to Support Reading Interactively
- Ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions have more than one answer and are not "yes" or "no" questions. For example, "Why do you think Bear feels frustrated with Duck?"
- Ask about what might happen next (predication) and why. For example, "Bear just turned away from Duck. What do you think will happen next? Why do you think that?"
- Expand on children's responses to build vocabulary and extend ideas. For example, "You said Bear writes. He's writing in a notebook that has a black and white cover."
- Ask how a character may be feeling, and why. For example, "How does Bear’s face look? How do you think Bear is feeling? Why do you think Bear is feeling that way?"
- Ask how a character solves a problem and how the child might solve the problem. For example, "What did Duck decide to do? What would you do?"
- Ask how an experience in the book relates to children's lives. For example, "It looks like Bear and Duck are having a picnic snack. What are some of your favorite snacks to eat with friends?"
- Prompt children to recall what happened in the story after reading. For example, "What happened at the beginning of the story? Then what happened? How did the story end?"
- Re-read books with children and have them recall and retell the story with you. For example, "Today I need your help reading one of our favorite books, A Splendid Friend, Indeed, by Suzanne Boom. Let's turn the page and see what happens. What is Duck doing on this first page? Where is Duck going?"
