The Advantages of the Shared Reading Experience for Bilingual Elementary Students

The Shared Reading Experience is a method being applied in the Cambridge public school system for bilingual elementary students. The objective of this paper is to discover why this method is effective. Consideration is given to language acquisition factors, reading methodologies, and the psychological and cognitive context of the bilingual child himself. A description of the procedure for presenting within the Shared Book Experience, and an explanation of the rationale for this procedure are contained in this investigation. The subsequent writing that the bilingual children produce finalizes this project. This paper is based on a two-month internship during the Fall of 1985 at the Longfellow Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a third to fifth grade classroom