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It is well accepted that reading aloud to children is 

an effective strategy in developing language skills 

and encouraging emergent literacy skills (Seely 

Flint, Kitson, Lowe & Shaw, 2014).   In the 

classroom setting, the teacher chooses a book and 

reads it aloud to the class.   It is typical for the 

book to be re-read throughout the week with the 

teacher targeting different areas of language and 

literacy development on each reading.  

Justice and Sofka (2010) reported that teachers 

need to include the following elements for effective 

and engaging storybook reading:

1. Orientation of the book (e.g. looking at the      

cover, turning pages)

2. Physical delivery (facial expressions, body 

language, pitch, intonation)

3. Word learning (vocabulary development)

4. Language elicitation (asking open-ended 

questions, predicting and problem solving)

5. Responsiveness (repeating and expanding the 

utterances to encourage language development)

6. Behavior management

7. Extensions (follow-up activities)

The majority of teachers and adults who read to 

young children would be aware of the importance 

of most of the above elements and the role they 

play in emergent literacy development.   Certainly 

as a Speech Pathologist these elements are 

obvious.   However during my further reading on 

reading aloud, the work of Justice and Sofka 

(2012) and Justice and Kaderavek (2002) on 

children’s exposure to print during reading aloud 

activities came as a surprise to me.  

I was both shocked and horrified to realise that in  

my career as a Speech Pathologist and as a mother 

to young children, I had been so focused on 

language stimulation, predicting, and problem 

solving techniques, that I had inadvertently 

ignored a technique that has such a profound 

impact on emergent literacy skills. I had not 

verbally or non-verbally highlighted the actual 

print in the thousands of books I have read to 

young children.  

To create an awareness of print it is important for parents and 

teachers to choose books with:

1. Few words per page

2. Large, bold narrative print that is easy for children to attend 

to

3. Redundant print (e.g. certain words appear regularly)

4. Engaging illustrations

5. Embedded print (e.g. "boom" in "Meg and Mog")

(Justice and Kaderavek, 2002)

Justice and Sofka (2010) identified four major objectives of 

reading aloud targeting print:

1.     Book and print organization

2.     Print meaning

3.     Letters

4.     Words 

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