Making Books Talk to Children.

Marie Carbo Have you ever observed slow readers listening to commercially recorded books? Their eyes usually wander to everything except the print on the page. Sometimes after spending an inordinate amount of time on one page, they frantically turn pages trying to find the place in the story. Clearly, these youngsters are not associating the printed and spoken words. For far too many slow readers, commercially taped books are recorded too fast, with too few or unclear page cues and distracting sound effects. You can change all this by record ing storybooks yourself. Not only will you save a substantial amount of money, but, more importantly, you can dramatically improve your stu dents' sight vocabularies, reading rates, comprehension, and attitudes. Even severely handicapped children have made impressive gains using teacher-made book tapes, with some youngsters increasing their sight vo cabulary as much as VA years in just three months (Carbo 1978a, 1978b). In addition, your tape recordings can provide a model for your students to form correct reading patterns. Much of the success of this teach ing system depends upon the "phrase reading" and "cueing" techniques described later in this article. The step-by-step instructions will enable you to cross-reference your tapes and books so you can build a permanent library of recorded books that your students can use and enjoy over and over again.