Soft skills surfacing in collaborative reading practices at home and early childhood centre

Abstract

When children and adults take part in reading collaboratively, both the child and the adult are active in sharing and contributing to the story. The benefit of this mutual engagement is that teachers and family members are able to introduce the child to reading comprehension skills and soft skills in meaningful and playful ways. When reading comprehension skills are developed through active engagement with a story, rather than passively listening to the story, soft skills such as curiosity, creativity, resilience, imagination and meta-cognitive skills develop (Claxton, Costa & Kallick, 2016). This article investigates how teachers and parents can introduce a child to literacy skills while simultaneously developing soft skills through collaborative reading, as an important building block in preparation for school.