More on Shared Reading Aloud #doctoralpursuit

Shared reading -- a concept conceived by Don Holdaway in 1979 as a way to re-create what happens when parents read aloud to their babies at home -- has evolved for classroom use through the years. Shared reading involves enlarged text whether through the use of big books, poster, or projected onto an interactive whiteboard or SMART board so that all students can see, follow along and eventually read along with the lead reader (usually the teacher).

Sharon Gill (2006) states: "Shared reading provides repeated readings of predictable texts and poems, building student’s sight-word vocabularies, fluency, and phonics knowledge during enjoyable and successful reading experiences." One benefit of shared reading is that a teacher can focus on targeted skills in a guided way. National Reading Panel results show that teaching phonics in the context of shared reading has the benefit of showing students how phonics knowledge is used in real reading.

Since shared reading is usually used with poems and/or short predictive text, it lends it's self very well with teaching onset and rime with our younger readers. Shared reading has also been recomend for use with english language learners and readers who struggle because of the guided aspect and because of the benefit of repeated readings of the text used. Children have the opportunity to interact with and behave like successful reader and teachers can demonstrate strategies usued by successful readers Sharon Gill says. (Gill & Isam, 2011)

Five Steps For Shared Reading

1. Reading the poem/short story
2. Introducing a skill
3. Working with words
4. Writing
5. Rereading

Shared reading begins with an introduction of the text, much like the introducting of any read aloud. After repeated readings of that chosen text the teach then introduces a skill she/he would like to focus on; for example a good poem with rhyme would be easy to use to introduce onset and ryhme. Once the skill is introduced the educator could have students work with the word patterns that where heard and worded with from the poem they have read together. As an extension, the students can write their own poem with the rhyming words from the shared poem or choose a topic from the theme of the poem.


Thank you for reading...

Gill, S. R. (2006). Teaching Rimes With Shared Reading. The Reading Teacher, 60(2),
          191-193. doi:10.1598/rt.60.2.9

Gill, S. R., & Islam, C. (2011). Shared Reading Goes High-Tech. The Reading Teacher, 65(3),
          224-227. doi:10.1002/trtr.01028

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