What About Read-Alouds?

When I meet teachers, I often ask them to tell me what they are reading aloud to their students right now and what their favorite read-aloud is. I am a firm believer in the magic of a powerful read-aloud, so my heart broke a little when a second-grade teacher replied, “Oh, I don’t read to them anymore now that they can read to themselves.” Fortunately, of the hundreds of teachers I have asked, that has been the only time I’ve gotten such a response.

When Kate DiCamillo was the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, she spoke often about the power of reading aloud to students. She shared that when she was a young girl, she lived for the minutes after lunch when Mrs. Boyette would read Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins to her rapt second-grade students. And in an interview with Mary Carole McCauley for the Baltimore Sun, Kate said, “I think the benefit comes from being connected to the people you’re with. It creates a community, and afterward, you carry the stories with you.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Reading aloud builds background knowledge, expands vocabulary, provides a rich model for fluency, and carries us on a joint virtual field trip where we laugh, gasp, cry, and learn more about others, ourselves, and the world. It is perhaps the most effective ad campaign we could ever devise for creating a desire to be lifelong readers. This truth was confirmed when the Report of the Commission on Reading identified reading aloud as “the single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading” (Anderson et al. 1985, 23). The report further concluded that reading aloud is “a practice that should continue throughout the grades” (51).

 Do you struggle with the importance or execution of making reading aloud a daily ritual? Regie Routman, in Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence and Equity for All Learners (2018), encourages us to rehearse the book, so our cadence, facial expressions, and tone of voice match the text well. She also shares that we shouldn’t feel guilty about reading a book all the way through. If our purpose is to get lost in a great book, it makes sense that an uninterrupted flow will lend itself to that end.

Steven Layne devotes an entire book to this important topic, called In Defense of Read-Aloud: Sustaining Best Practice. If you struggle with reading aloud at all, we can’t recommend Layne’s book highly enough. In it you’ll discover recommended titles and all you need to know about establishing a successful read-aloud time, selecting the perfect read-aloud, and learning the craft of reading aloud.

If you’d like to hear from a master, you’ll want to listen in as Mem Fox tells us how to create read-aloud magic. In fact, her 24-section tutorial would be perfect to share with parents so they will be encouraged to create read-aloud magic with their children at home.

My dream job would be one where I could read aloud to children all day. That doesn’t exist for me yet, but I can certainly fulfill my dream a bit by reading to students every chance I get. I hope you will too.