Engaging Children to be Readers — Interactive Read Aloud -Part 7

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents” — Emilie Buchwald

What do powerful ELA classrooms look like? If asked, could you define the most powerful literacy practices in a classroom? I would like to highlight what I believe to be those powerful practices starting in this blog post and continuing in subsequent ones. The first and to me one of the most powerful is interactive read aloud.

Interactive Read Aloud

Powerful literacy classrooms spend a significant amount of time dedicated to interactive or teacher read aloud. During the read aloud, teachers are demonstrating or modeling how to actively, effectively and critically engage with texts. This was truly my favorite time of the day with my students. It was intriguing to me how reading aloud to children has the power to absolutely mesmerize children. I experienced this over and over how reading aloud is like a magnet that draws children in like nothing else I have experienced. There is something about sharing a good book, either fiction or non-fiction that feels powerful and pleasurable. The pleasure factor is motivating for students that have found reading difficult. Pleasure is derived from something external where joy arises within. It important to help students transfer the pleasurable feeling achieved from the read aloud experience to joy so the motivation becomes intrinsic.

The joy factor has the power to captivate and transform a child from a non or struggling reader to a lifelong reader. A solid foundation in literacy must include joy and engagement. When joy is present, it will fuel engagement as well as the other important components in the literacy process: focus and stamina, fluency and expression, and comprehension. I have shared before that I was uninterested reader. I wouldn’t call myself a struggling reader, but I wasn’t interested. I was that child that enjoyed doing things with others. That is still true today. I will do the most awful task as long as I can do it with somebody else. I have thought a lot about that in regard to children’s learning. If it is true for me, it will definitely be true for some other students. That speaks to the power of reading aloud. It is a shared time where the pleasurable feeling of reading has the opportunity to secretly captivate a child and turn them into a reader. That is the ultimate goal in literacy for me.

That is what was missing for me as a child. Reading was not a shared experience it was a solo experience and I wanted to engage with others. Remember if a child doesn’t like to read, examine there reading behaviors. Are they required to read alone most of the time? Are they reading just right books or books that are too difficult for their current reading level? These are two critical questions that need to be addressed for an unengaged reader. Remember in the learning process if a person is struggling, a coach or knowledgeable or proficient other needs to come alongside support and encourage the student so learning can continue. In reading that is the teacher or parent sitting down and reading to or with the child. There are other factors as well but this is a good place to start.

In reading aloud to children, I must remind you that it is not necessary to read the entire book. Due to time constraints, it is often not possible to share the whole book. Sometimes it might be necessary to break the text into sections and read over several days. If that isn’t possible, an important section highlighting or modeling the skill that is the objective of the lesson is all that needs to be shared. An interesting by product of not reading the complete text is that it leaves children hanging and can be a great technique to engage students in reading the rest of the book on their own.

Of course there are other aspects that need to be present for them to be a successful lifelong reader and we will tackle another one tomorrow.

Please take a moment to click this link and share your information with me. I would LOVE to hear from you.

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

― Frederick Douglass

The joy is in the journey!

Blessings and Peace,,

Mary