Cross-age reading: A strategy for helping poor readers

Abstract

language, growth in background knowledge, eagerness to read, learning to read before school, and even success in beginning reading in school (Teale, 1984). Perhaps the best testament to the power of storybook reading for primary grade children is a study by Feitelson, Kita, and Goldstein (1986). They showed that reading aloud regularly to first graders caused the children to increase signifi cantly their listening comprehension, active use of language, and decoding skills. There fore, being read to helps a child build an ex cellent foundation for continued literacy growth. What about the potential of storybook reading for helping older children doing the reading to become better readers? To investi gate this question we conducted a small-scale