Talking, singing and reading with children can teach them about sounds and how sounds come together to form language.

This helps children to develop their listening and speaking skills, which are utilised when they start to read and write.

Book reading also teaches children a variety of communication functions including interpreting tone of voice and facial expressions, recognising the relationship between words and pictures, expanding their vocabulary by listening and repeating new words, asking questions, elaborating on stories, problem solving and developing literacy skills.

Shared book reading (also known as dialogic reading or PEER reading) is a way that parents can encourage their child to become the story teller by pausing and engaging with the children about the story.

PEER is an acronym outlining a simple strategy you can use to expand children’s comprehension, thinking and explanation skills.

P – Prompt the child to engage with the story by asking open ended questions (“what can you see?”). Older children can be asked questions that may require some analysis or predicting (“why is he climbing up there?”, “what will happen next?”).

E – Evaluate or acknowledge the child’s comment. This is often done by paraphrasing what they have said (“I can see the bananas too!”)

E – Expand their vocabulary or sentence length by adding new information (“The monkey is climbing to get the bananas because he’s hungry!”)

R – Repeat the new information or encouraging the child to try new words to reinforce the expansion (“Can you say monkey climbing?”, “That monkey is …. hungry!”).

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If you have concerns about your child’s communication development, call 1800 654 324.