Rio School District

Read-Alouds

Whole Group

Benefits for Students

  • acquire awareness of the structure of language
  • learn new vocabulary
  • build oral language
  • gain background knowledge and true fluency
  • develop critical thinking skills through discussion and collaborative work
  • be exposed to a variety of reading material, how different genre and text types are read differently
  • build culturally responsive classrooms
  • discover why one reads- and develop their own love of reading - when they hear the teacher read interesting material in an engaging way

Planning

  • Decide on purpose (introducing or revisiting big theme ideas, strategy instruction, knowledge of literature, exposure to text types, connect to SEL competencies)
  • Choose a text (suited to purpose, challenging, culturally relevant/reflects diversity and enjoyable)
  • Preview the text (notate/tab reference points for instruction, think-alouds, open-ended questions, and assessment points, choose a “hook”)
  • Student interaction/Assessment (answer questions individually, turn/talk, stop/jot, sketch, sign language/hand motions)
  • Identify vocabulary (pre-teach or step-aside)
  • Practice (facial expression/body gestures as well as all prosodic elements)

Kindergarten example

4th grade example

TOSA Tips

  • Be intentional
  • Balance reading, thinking and discussion time
  • Connect to small-group instruction/practice to deepen students’ understanding
  • Encourage students to practice strategy in their independent reading