Defined as “the interactions and discussions that occur when a teacher and children look at a book together”, shared reading is a powerful tool. The Preparing for Literacy guidance report, written by the Education Endowment Foundation, suggests that shared reading activities have “consistently been shown to improve children’s language comprehension skill”, and this may contribute to the development of reading comprehension.

But it is also clear from the evidence that just reading a book to children is not as effective as reading a book with children. It appears that although the frequency with which children are exposed to shared reading is important, the quality of these experiences may be even more so.

The intangible something that happens between the adult and the children when they interact around a text is what matters: what the adult chooses to draw attention to and how they engage with the children. As a teacher and someone who works with teachers to develop their skills, I want to know what these essential ingredients might be. I want to understand what it will look, sound and feel like when I see it in practice.

Examining the studies closely has given me a greater insight into the “what and how” of effective shared reading. It is easy to assume that the book itself helps children to learn. Instead, the evidence suggests it is what the adult focuses on as they interact with children through and beyond the book that makes the difference.

While we can be seduced into thinking that shared reading is a vehicle for explicitly building vocabulary, and teaching letters, punctuation and text organisation in context, studies suggest that children’s vocabulary and story understanding are improved when practitioners encourage abstract thinking.

Perhaps they might invite the children to compare different settings, or make a prediction about what is going to happen in the story. Asking children to comment on a character’s feelings has been shown to increase their emotional competence, helping them to understand their own and others’ emotions, and how to respond to and regulate them.

How we engage the children in the conversation beyond the actual reading of the text is also important. It seems that one of the secrets to effective shared reading lies in that intangible connection - a warm emotional climate creating the space for powerful pupil-teacher interactions.

This leaves me with a challenge: how do I explain what effective shared reading looks like? It is easy to write a list of instructions, or a lesson plan that outlines which words to elaborate on and which letters to practise. But those aspects lie within the text. How a teacher behaves is just as important as what they do; these are the essential, active, intangible ingredients that are impossible to capture on paper. It isn’t the “what” but the “how” that matters most.

Megan Dixon is director of literacy at the Aspire Educational Trust

This article originally appeared in the 26 July 2019 issue under the headline “Shared reading can feed pupils’ minds”