I've Completed a Read-Aloud: Now What Can I Do With It? #doctoralpursuit

I am a presenter at the 2017 TALE Conference at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. I chose to speak about the read-aloud. The read-aloud is probably the easiest structure to use for a classroom teacher. It can go along with whatever reading program is already in place. "Read-aloud is a teaching structure that introduces students to the joy of constructing meaning from text." (Burkins & Yaris 2016) Reading aloud to children has a wealth of benefits but my focus will be on what activities can be done with the read-aloud once we have read the book.

My presentation will start with a read-aloud. One of my new favorite children's books is "How Rocket Learned to Read." by Tad Hills. I chose this book because there is a character in the book who uses a read-aloud to hook the student (Rocket) to want to learn to read. I want the teachers to get a visual of how powerful a read-aloud can be.

Research says that a read-aloud is a good way to build oral language and to cultivate rich vocabulary that some of our children come to us lacking. Research also tells us that children from professional households have better vocabulary because of the conversations and exposure to opportunity they have at home. The reverse is true for those from lower income households.

I have previously written about some types of read-alouds and I will briefly discuss them during my presentation. I will focus on the:

• interactive read-aloud - involving the students in the read-aloud with questions and modeled thinking
• Shared read-aloud -using text the students can see and interact with
• Repeated read-aloud - using an interactive read-aloud with multiple exposures to the same text or texts of the same topic.    

Read-alouds can be done to model and build basic reading skills from phonics, phonemic awareness, and print awareness to reading comprehension skills like making connections, inference,  and synthesizing. The educator can read-aloud a text and model her/his thinking and/or complete a mini lesson after, that is related to the story or using some words or phrases from the text.

Completing a read-aloud is more than just grabbing a book from the shelf and beginning to read to students -- believe me, I've done it more times than I'd care to share with you here-- its is best done after a little bit of being intentional. For the maximum benefit the educator needs to prepare and present. In an effort to prepare the educator can:

• Think about the audience (students)
• Think about their reading level and vocabulary
• Think about different genres

It is of utmost importance to read the book yourself before reading it to students to insure the book you have chosen is appropriate. As you are pre-reading the book, look for places to stop to talk about vocabulary, ask questions, or model thinking. Consider practice reading to help with a fluent read-aloud experience. Participants will learn that for read-alouds to be effective they need to start with good:

• Book introduction
• Vocabulary support techniques
• Analytical comments and questions

Lester Laminack says: "To make read-aloud intentional I believe that we must be as thoughtful in our planning as we are when selecting manipulatives for mathematics or when establishing the flow of classroom." (2009) When we are intentional about the read-aloud we can move away from the basal driven classroom and use this structure to benefit the students we teach.

Thank you for reading.

Burkins, Jan Miller and Kim Yaris. Who's Doing The Work?. 1st ed. Print.

Trelease, Jim. The Read-Aloud Handbook. 1st ed. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England:         Penguin Books, 1982. Print.





   

    

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