A group storybook-reading intervention with children at a residential school for the deaf

Deaf children's patterns of emergent literacy can parallel those of hearing children, but their acquisition of conventional reading skills in elementary school is often delayed. Group storybook reading in the residences of a state-sponsored school for the Deaf was investigated as a means of fostering literacy development outside the classroom. Eighteen children, ages 4-11 years, participated. The nine children in the experimental group cottages participated in group storybook reading twice each week for 5 months. Both the experimental and the control-group cottages were provided with a variety of books that were rotated biweekly. Children were highly engaged during the storybook-reading sessions, particularly when the readers used an interactive/expressive reading style. Children in the experimental group performed more independently on an emergent reading task, and their counselors judged them to be more interested in books than children in the control group.