Abstract
Reading proficiency is foundational for children’s future opportunities, yet many struggle to develop adequate literacy skills due to limited instructional resources and increasingly diverse classrooms. While one-to-one tutoring is highly effective, it is difficult to scale. We present AI paired reading for Swedish, co-designed iteratively with teachers and children to complement classroom practice and promote reading engagement. The system combines automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, and large language models to enable children to read with a virtual peer. A mixed-methods classroom study with 43 second-grade pupils showed high engagement, sustained motivation and voluntary re-use. However, the study also revealed key design tensions around feedback clarity, difficulty adaptation, and the role of AI as a peer versus evaluator. We contribute empirically grounded design insights for AI-supported reading with children and discuss implications for integrating AI into classroom literacy practices.
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