Read Aloud

Elementary Level:

Usually called an "interactive read aloud" - this strategy helps the teacher assure that students are thinking and talking about text. A brief discussion takes place before and after reading as well as at a few planned times during reading. Interaction between the teacher and students extends understanding of a text. All participants benefit from the thinking of each other.

Excerpted with adaptations from Literacy Beginnings and Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency (Pinnell and Fountas, 2011): Interactive read-aloud requires highly intentional teaching. As you are choosing books for your read-aloud, above all, be sure that the story, language, and illustrations are highly engaging to children. In using interactive read-aloud as a teaching approach, you and your students will have productive conversations about books if you follow these steps.

Try them in your next read-aloud.

  1. Plan opening remarks: engage students’ active thinking
  2. Stop to invite quick comments during reading: promote student thinking within, beyond, and about the text.
  3. Discuss the text after reading: attend to students overall meaning, implications for learning, and attention to writer’s craft.
  4. Plan an engaging, inquiry-based activity following reading (art, writing, drawing, etc.).

Interactive read-aloud grows shared literary knowledge. The read-aloud levels the playing field, ensuring that readers in the classroom experience rich, interesting texts that are age and grade appropriate, regardless of their independent and instructional reading levels. All students can think and talk about the text even if they can’t read it for themselves.

Secondary (Content Areas) Level:

Group read alouds or "read aloud think aloud": A group read aloud that might be teacher or student-led. This practice supports the engagement of all students, especially those who struggle with reading the text independently, and reinforces the primacy of the text throughout Close Reading lessons. The teacher may use a read aloud think aloud to:

  • Clarifying confusing passages (by narrating reader strategies when the reader confronts a confusing section).
  • Posing questions (to yourself as the teacher or to students)
  • Make predictions or inferences
  • Visualize what is happening
  • Connect to prior knowledge or experience
  • Make analogies
  • Monitor understanding of the author's purpose

Tips:

  • Choose short pieces of text
  • Pause frequently to think, analyze, discuss (either by teacher modeling of how to think about text or through student engagement)
  • Structure for frequent interaction

Ideas:

  • Consider re-reading the piece following discussion so that students can hear this through a new lens.
  • Is a read aloud the best option? Maybe other approaches to a close read are better (students read silently, underlining challenging vocabulary and key points, then discuss)?
  • OR combine close reading with read alouds (i.e. Close read, discuss/think aloud, then re-read aloud).

Sources:

Brown, S., & Kappes, L. (2012). Implementing the Common Core State Standards: A primer on "close reading of text". The Aspen Institute Education & Society Program.

Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. (2006). Teaching for comprehending and fluency: Thinking, talking, and writing about reading K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinmann.

Zwiers, J. (2004). Building reading comprehension habits in grades 6-12: A toolkit of classroom activities. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.