Teachers

Read Alouds

Listening to an adult model fluent reading increases students’ own fluency and comprehension skills (Trelease, 2001), as well as expanding their vocabulary, background knowledge, sense of story, awareness of genre and text structure, and comprehension of texts read (Wu & Samuels, 2004) Students listening to a fluent adult read aloud is also one of the six elements of instruction that every child should experience every day. (Every Child, Every Day)

Teaching kids new words and definitions is very important, but what’s more crucial to ongoing vocabulary development is modeling when and how to be inquisitive about words. During a read aloud teachers should model the “think aloud” technique to show students how to mentally investigate words. (Techniques for Teaching Vocabulary to Elementary Students/Edutopia) This technique may sound like …..Oh wait a minute, what does that word mean? Does that make sense in the sentence?