Echo Reading

Echo reading provides a fluent oral model for a child and gives an opportunity to practice inflection (alteration in pitch or tone of the voice) and intonation (a use of pitch characteristic of a speaker or dialect).  It is especially helpful for a child who tends to read word by word, or who needs practice in running words and phrases together in a natural flow.

In echo reading, you read a sentence of the text and have the child read it back to you.  Remind and encourage the child to make the reading sound interesting. You can do echo reading sentence by sentence with early readers, but with older children you may want to model the reading of several sentences or a short paragraph at one time.  By reading the piece fluently and smoothly, you demonstrate how the language of the text should flow and give the child a chance to get a feel for it.

Echo reading not only is good practice but helps children see that reading is interesting.  It makes reading fun.  If your child is a beginning reader, try this technique with books that are on your child's reading level or slightly above.