What is it

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Pause, Prompt and Praise
What is it? Pause, prompt and praise tutoring
procedures were developed for use by
non-professional reading tutors, primarily
parents of low progress readers, peer tutors and
volunteers. This method stresses that children
learn to read by reading, not by learning a large
number of separate words or subskills. It
assumes three things first, that the child is
provided with an appropriate level and type of
text secondly that the childs progress is
carefully monitored with respect to the text
using running records or simple miscue analysis
and thirdly, that the teacher or tutor listens to
the reading and gives appropriate feedback.

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Who can benefit from Pause, Prompt and Praise?
Low-progress readers-benefit from the extra
practice of reading aloud improving fluency,
self-corrections and reading level. Parent
tutors-working together to successfully remedy a
weakness in reading may result in an improved
parent-child relationship. Peer tutors-working
together provides feelings of closeness and
friendship and is good social training.
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Who can be a Pause, Prompt and Praise
tutor? Anyone interested in helping a struggling
reader can be trained in the pause, prompt and
praise method. This method has been used
successfully with teachers, parents, peers and
community volunteers. Numerous studies have been
completed demonstrating its effectiveness.
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How often should the tutoring take
place? Tutoring sessions for younger students
should occur at least three days a week and last
approximately 10-15 minutes each. Older students
may be tutored three days a week for
approximately 15-20 minutes per session.
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How does this method fit into my childs busy
routine? Tutoring sessions can be done during the
school day using peer tutors, cross-age tutors or
parent volunteers. Tutoring sessions may also
take place at home using parent tutors.
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Where will I find the appropriate materials? You
will use the correct level reading materials
supplied by your childs reading
teacher. Children learning to read must adopt a
variety of strategies for predicting and working
out unknown words. Reading material at the
appropriate level provides some unfamiliar words,
but also enough known words to be able to make
good predictions, even if these are miscues.
Running records will be used to assess the
childs rate of reading accuracy. If the rate is
below 80 the text is too difficult. If the rate
is over 95 it is too easy. An ideal level for
children learning to read, with all the
advantages of making mistakes, is said to be
between 80 to 90 accuracy.
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How do I know if my child is making progress?
Running records will be taken regularly to
monitor your childs progress. When the student
reads a title at 90 or better, he/she will be
given a title at the next highest level. Your
child will be able to chart his/her own progress.
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How do I motivate my child to participate? The
ultimate goal is for our children to adopt a
life-long love of reading. In order for this to
happen, students must encounter successful
reading experiences. Children will only succeed
when they are given appropriate leveled
materials. It is also beneficial to keep a record
of the many titles your child has read. Once
they see how they are progressing, their
intrinsic motivation will increase. Students
participating in this tutoring project will
receive free take-home books which they will
keep. This will help instill a love of reading
and pride in ownership of good literature.
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Pause Pausing is difficult for most reading
tutors, but it is a key factor in responding
helpfully to the child who is learning to read.
Mistakes (errors, miscues) are to be expected it
is an important part of the process of learning
to read. When students are interrupted
immediately upon making an error, their
opportunity for self-correction is limited. This
not only inhibits learning and progress, but also
fosters dependence. The delaying of attention to
errors by five seconds or until the end of the
sentence leads to more self-correction and an
increase in the childs reading accuracy.
Self-correction is seen as an indicator that the
child is reading actively. They are able to
solve problem words independently
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Prompt The type of prompt or feedback given
depends on the nature of the miscue. If the
error does not make sense, then the prompt should
be aimed at giving clues about the meaning of the
story, perhaps by asking a question (contextual
prompt). If the mistake makes sense but the word
is still not correct, the tutors prompt should
be aimed at helping the child to look again at
the graphic and auditory properties of the word,
how it looks and sounds (graphophonic
prompt). Should the child hesitate and then say
nothing, the tutor can either ask the child to
read to the end, or from the beginning of the
sentence. Often this additional context will
help the child to work out the unknown word.
When the child is not able to correct the miscue
after two prompts, the tutor is to provide the
correct word. This encourages the fluency of the
story and does not draw unnecessary attention to
the childs difficulty in responding correctly.
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• Praise
• Praise for correct reading must be specific and
  immediate. The praise should be contingent upon
  good reading behaviors. For example praise
  should be given following
• Self-corrections
• Prompted corrections
• Reading sections or pages without error.
• The criterion for success should be allowed to
  shift from small, tutor-dependent to more
  complex, independent behaviors.

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A Team Effort Setting up a Pause, Prompt and
Praise peer tutoring program requires some
initial effort from teachers. Continual
monitoring of both tutors and tutees is essential
for a successful program. At the end of the year,
all participants (parents, teachers, tutors and
tutees) will be asked to complete a survey in
order to evaluate the success of the program. We
believe that with a little time, patience and
planning our low-achieving readers can experience
the success they deserve while learning to read.
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Resource Page Glynn, T., Dick, M. Flower, D.
(1992) Pause, Prompt and Praise a reading
tutoring programme (Education Department,
University of Otago, Dunedin). Merrett, F. (1994)
Improving Reading a teachers guide to
peer-tutoring (London, David Fulton. Wheldall, K.
Colmar, S. (1990) Peer tutoring for
low-progress readers using Pause, Prompt and
Praise, in H. C. Foot, M. J. Morgan R. H.
Shute (Eds) Children Helping Children (London,
Wiley), pp. 117-134. Wheldall, K., Colmar, S.,
Wenban-Smith, J., Morgan, A. 7 Quance, B. (1992)
Teacher-child oral reading interactions how do
teachers typically tutor?, Educational
Psychology, 12, pp. 177-194. Wheldall, K.,
Merrett, F. Colmar, S. (1987) Pause, Prompt
and Praise for parents and peers effective
tutoring for low progress readers, Support for
Learning, 12, pp. 5-12.