INTERACTIVE READING ALOUD TO ISRAELI FIRST-GRADERS - ITS CONTRIBUTIONTO LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

THREE ISSUES were examined in this study: (a) how reading to a first-g rade class of children requiring enhancement (who may be identifiable as socially and culturally challenged) affects their achievement in de coding, reading comprehension, and storytelling; (b) how reading stori es out of a series written by one author affects their achievement as compared with reading isolated stories; and, (c) how reading different types of literature affects the amount of voluntary reading. Fifteen Israeli first-grade classes (339 participants) were randomly divided i nto four treatment groups, three experimental groups and one control g roup. The first group (four classes) listened to stories (published in school readers) by different authors. The second group (four classes) listened to stories by one author. The third group (three classes) li stened in installments to a multiple-volume series of stories written by the same author as the second group. The control group (4 classes) engaged in regular activities (worksheets, drawing, pasting, etc.). Th e teachers of the three experimental groups were asked to read interac tively to their students, that is, to interact with their students bef ore, during, and after reading in order to help them to understand the story. They were to do this during the last 20 minutes of the day, fi ve times a week, for 6 months. The findings indicated that classroom s tory-reading to first-grade students led them to increases in decoding , reading comprehension, and picture storytelling. Among the various t ypes of treatments, reading by teachers from a series of stories in in stallments was shown to have the greatest effect on reading achievemen t on the extent of reading for pleasure and on the quantity of books p urchased for leisure reading. The findings suggested that exposure to a series of stories initiates a process (a magic secret), which stimul ates young readers to reread these books.