The Missouri Reader Vol. 37, Issue 1

confidence in using the strategy, and improves the likelihood that strategies being taught at school will be carried over to the home. Session 2 should be held about a month later when parents have had the opportunity to practice and become familiar with the CAR strategy, but not so long that they loose interest in the process. Session 2 should be used to review the CAR strategy and check in with parents to provide an opportunity for them to share successes, questions, and / or concerns. After this initial review, the 1, 2, 3 Tell Me What You See strategy (Table 3) can be introduced. Again, after a brief introduction, the strategy should be modeled with parents, and parents should be provided with time to practice with their children. It is important to help parents understand that they can use dialogic reading strategies with any book regardless of their home language or literacy skills. Appendix 1 provides a list of English and Spanish books the authors recommend for dialogic reading. However, this list is just to get parents started. The only thing parents need to look for are children‘s books that have detailed and varied illustrations including a simple and interesting story line for their children. Appendix 2 provides additional strategies about how to increase children‘s vocabulary using dialogic reading that could be introduced at a third family night or provided to parents as a handout as a follow-up to the second family night. Conclusion Dialogic reading is a research-based program that helps parents expand their children‘s language and emergent literacy skills by sharing a book together. Research has shown that exposure to dialogic reading opportunities for young children results in significant gains in expressive language, sound and letter identification, emergent writing skills, and knowledge of print concepts. Huebner and Payne (2010) found that two years after receiving brief dialogic reading training, parents who received training used 90% more dialogic reading behaviors than parents who had not received training. This leads to the encouraging conclusion that parents‘ literacy interactions with their children can be positively influenced with limited dialogic reading training. The PARTNERS Program is a quick and easy research-based program that can be used to help parents and caregivers of young children increase their children‘s vocabulary and verbal interactions. Appendix 1: Sample English and Spanish Books Recommended for Dialogic Reading English Books Bilingual and Spanish Books 10 Minutes till Bedtime, by Peggy Rathmann Bravo, by Ginger Foglesong Guy Big Red Barn, by Margaret Wise Brown Fiesta, by Ginger Foglesong Guy Good-bye, Hello!, by Shen Roddie Hello Night / HolaNoche, by Amy Costales Good Night Gorilla, by Peggy Rathmann I'm Just Like My Mom; I'm Just Like My Dad / Me Parezco Tanto a Mi Mama; Me Parez, by Jorge Ramos In Grandma‘s Arms, by Jayne C. Shelton Is Your Mama a Llama?, by Deborah Guarino My Way / A Mi Manera, by Lynn Reiser Llama Llama Red Pajama, by Anna Dewdney Nuestro Autobus / The Bus for Us, by Suzanne Bloom Max Cleans Up, by Rosemary Wells Perros! Perros! / Dogs! Dogs!, by Ginger Foglesong Guy Old MacDonald Had a Farm, by Jane Cabrera ©The Missouri Reader, 37 (1) p.39

The Missouri Reader Vol. 37, Issue 1 | Page 39