The Effect of a Sibling Shared Reading Intervention on the Reading Development of Early School-Aged Children in Rural China

Research Findings: The home literacy environment provides important support for the reading development of preschool and early school-age children; however, existing research has mainly focused on the role of parents. The current study examines the effect of a 10-week, sibling-shared reading intervention on the reading development of lower-grade primary school children in rural China. Sixty children in grades 1–2 from multi-child families were recruited from a rural primary school and randomly assigned to the intervention and control groups (30 in each group). Results showed that although the two groups of children were well matched on various background characteristics and reading measures at baseline, immediately after the intervention, children in the Sibling Shared Reading intervention group not only performed significantly better than the control group on intervention-based character recognition but also showed significantly higher performance on reading comprehension beyond the intervention materials than the control group. At the six-month follow-up test, the intervention group also performed significantly better than the control group in reading comprehension. The findings of the present study extend the home literacy model and suggest the role of siblings in children’ reading development. Practice or Policy: We recommend that, in addition to parents, reading enrichment activities among siblings are an important and effective strategy for promoting children’s reading development in multi-child families.