Shared Reading

Shared Reading:

During shared reading, the teacher and the students engage in a shared experience around a text. It is imperative that the text is enlarged so that all students have visual access to the print. During shared reading, students actively observe and participate in reading with fluency and expression. Teachers should select a text that is slightly above the general classroom level to read, and reread, across a week. Whether whole class, or small group, this mode of instruction establishes early foundational reading behaviors and word solving skills. The intention is that students will transfer the work from this shared experience to their independent reading. Shared reading is a model for students that shows how a reader integrates multiple sources of information, and makes the process of reading explicit. Teachers at times select decodable texts for shared reading experiences, whether in a whole group or a small group, the students practice phonics skills that were previously taught. The students may then have access to the decodable to use during their independent reading time, and/or at home reading time.

Teacher’s Role

• Select an appropriate text

• Guide students through the text

• Model thinking aloud and wondering

• Informally assess students’ strengths and challenges

Student’s Role

• Listen to, and engage in, the text

• Participate in problem solving, meaning making, predicting, and comprehending

• Turn and talk, to share thinking or to make sense of an idea