A technique used to facilitate early literacy, which involves an adult and a…

Early-literacy shared-book-reading techniques mainly differ in who leads the reading and questioning, and whether that role stays fixed with the adult or is deliberately exchanged with the child. In role-exchange techniques, the adult first models questioning about the book and then steps back so the child takes over asking questions, turning the session into an active two-way dialogue rather than one-way listening.

The scenario in the question fits this role-exchange pattern: the adult and child look at a book together, and the adult begins by prompting questions to draw out a dialogue about the story. As the reading continues, the child is drawn into an increasingly active role in that dialogue, including asking questions back to the adult, so the exchange becomes two-way rather than the adult doing all the talking. This adult-scaffolded, back-and-forth style of book-sharing — developed as an early-literacy strategy by researcher Grover Whitehurst and colleagues, whose side of the exchange is often summarised by the PEER technique (Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, Repeat) — is specifically termed Dialogic Reading.

• Storytelling: the adult narrates a tale, typically without following a shared printed text, and there is no built-in requirement for the child to later take over the questioning.

• Model reading: the adult reads aloud to demonstrate fluent reading behaviour; the child’s role is to observe and imitate, not to take over questioning.

• Shared reading: adult and child read a text together with the adult guiding the pace, but the technique does not hinge on the questioning role being handed to the child.

• Dialogic reading: the questioning role explicitly passes from adult to child during the shared reading, matching the description in the question.

Hence, the technique described is Dialogic reading.