LITERACY

Reading Aloud in The Classroom: Best Techniques and Tips

2 March 2024/ By Zineb DJOUB

In academic settings, the primary method for acquiring new knowledge and accessing alternative explanations and interpretations is presumed to be through reading. Indeed, reading serves as a means to obtain information, knowledge, and insights from a variety of books and other written materials. Thus, developing students’ reading skills is crucial for their growth and academic success. Yet, if we are to make our students fluent readers, we need to provide them with ample opportunities to listen to and reflect upon a wide range of different text types. Using reading aloud in the classroom can sustain such engagement and render the reading experience more rewarding for our students.

To make the best use of your reading-aloud sessions, I’m suggesting here a set of handy techniques and tips. But, before that let’s explain first the meaning of reading aloud and its benefits for students’ learning.

What is reading aloud?

Reading aloud is communication in which a reader reads to an interested audience.

In the classroom context, reading aloud is a technique that can be used in early childhood, elementary education, and even middle school.

Teachers read the passage aloud to an entire class or a small group while students follow the text in their book. During such a process, he/she uses variations in pitch, tone, pace, volume, pauses, and eye contact, and addresses questions and comments to produce a smooth and enjoyable shared reading experience.

So, reading aloud is not just merely articulating words, but also modeling appropriate strategies for comprehension, such as rereading, predicting, or activating prior knowledge.

Students may also take turns reading aloud to practice and improve their reading and communication skills.

So, the aim of reading aloud in class is to model proper pronunciation, intonation, and expression, and help students understand the text and enjoy reading.

Benefits of reading aloud in the classroom

Reading aloud is a valuable practice with various educational benefits.

This strategy helps in language development. As teachers model fluent reading during the read-aloud sections, students develop skills such as paying attention to punctuation, reading complete phrases, adopting an appropriate speed and rhythm, and not distorting pitch, stress, and intonation.

So, practicing regularly reading aloud was shown to increase fluency.

When reading aloud, teachers are also modeling for students the strategies to process and understand the text they are reading. As Ivey (2003) stated, “The bottom line is that when teachers read to students they enhance students’ understanding and their inclination to read independently” (p. 812).

Further, repeated exposure to read-aloud with modeling of appropriate language and fluency encourages the love of reading. Alshehri (2014) agreed that reading aloud strategies develop students’ interest in the learning material hence, increase their desire to be lifelong readers.

We all know that children love storytelling. However, it’s important to recognize that the practice of reading aloud is not limited to primary-grade teachers; even middle school students, who possess advanced listening skills, can benefit from this activity.

Research has shown that these students considered reading aloud as the most preferred activity (Ivey & Broaddus, 2001) and enjoyed the literature (Seefeldt, 2003).

Techniques and tips for effective reading aloud

Here are some techniques and tips to enhance the effectiveness of reading aloud.

# Planning

Reading aloud is careful reading, so consider planning for this activity to achieve the intended learning outcomes.

Your planning starts with selecting your text or book. Be sure to choose reading materials that are interesting, and age-appropriate for your students. Still, they should match curriculum goals to get the desired result from the reading-aloud activity.

Then, plan for your reading comprehension questions, prompts, cues, and tasks that foster students’ understanding and engagement with the text. You can also consider tech tools or visual aids to support your reading-aloud activity.

Schedule your reading-aloud sessions. It’s important to make reading aloud an integral part of your instructional routine (10–15 minutes per day) so that students get familiar with the process.

You can incorporate it into your morning meeting, before recess and lunch, or at the end of your lesson.

Your planning may also include setting up the environment in a way that promotes a relaxed atmosphere. You can arrange seating, and use cushions, rugs, or comfortable chairs.

# Modeling

Reading aloud to students requires modeling, wherein you demonstrate effective reading comprehension strategies, proper pronunciation, and expressive interpretation to support them in developing their reading skills.

So, when you’re reading to students, be sure to model proper reading techniques including tone, expression, and pacing.

Don’t read too fast, try to take a deep breath at the end of every paragraph, and vary the tone and pitch of your voice. Good posture will also help you read and speak more effectively.

Additionally, students need to be shown how to use reading comprehension strategies to process and understand the text they’re reading.

Therefore, to help students focus on comprehension, you need to model appropriate questioning techniques, namely prediction, inference, and utilizing context clues.

This means that when you read aloud to students, you’re also thinking aloud, providing a model of how a good reader processes the information from the text and supporting them to understand and engage with it.

So, while reading you’re supposed to pose to address questions, show illustrations, make connections to characters from other books and texts, use prior knowledge to help them understand vocabulary or characters, identify text aspects like theme and story elements, or compare the author’s style to other authors/texts.

Accordingly, proper implementation of read-aloud involves modeling effective fluency and comprehension. That’s why careful planning is necessary so that you can prepare comprehension questions and identify your modeling strategies to sustain students’ motivation in reading.

# Interactive Read-alouds

Reading aloud should allow students to engage with the text.

To support this engagement with the text, besides selecting the appropriate and interactive book, you need to make the classroom atmosphere comfortable and alive.

Playing background music that connects with the text’s theme during reading-aloud sessions, arranging seating, and incorporating visual aids (images, illustrations, or relevant props) and technology (audiobooks or multimedia presentations) can make those sessions more enjoyable.

In addition, for more interactive read-alouds apply dialogic reading where students are not just listening, but also actively engaged with the text.

Here are some important tips to achieve this:

-Use a variety of reading-aloud materials: poems, nonfiction, newspaper articles, how-to books or directions, jokes, menus, online material, and short stories.

-Activate students’ prior knowledge and encourage them to make connections, predict, ask, and answer questions. Throughout the reading, ask questions like, Did you see that? Did you hear that? And use cues to hold their attention like, Listen to this! Another important.., etc.

-Invite students to turn and talk to partners before and after the reading-aloud activity. They can share their understanding, and views, take turns role-playing as characters, sketch a scene they imagined during the reading, create questions to quiz each other, etc.

-Use discussion starters after the session to guide and direct the interactions such as something new I learned was…, This reminded me of…because I didn’t expect it when ….

-Encourage students to take turns reading, provide help, and praise their effort and achievement.

When done correctly, reading aloud transforms into an interactive experience, challenging students to actively participate in fostering their reading fluency and cultivating a passion for reading. I hope the suggested techniques and tips will help you create such an engaging learning experience. Happy reading aloud!

References

Alshehri, M. (2014). Improving reading comprehension for Saudi Students by using the reading-aloud strategy (Doctoral dissertation). The State University of New York at Fredonia, New York.

Ivey, G., & Broaddus, K., (2001). Just plain reading: A survey of what makes student want to read in middle school classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 36, pp. 350-377.

Ivey, G., (2003). The teacher makes it more explainable and other reasons to read aloud in the intermediate grades”, The Reading Teacher, vol/issue: 56(8), pp. 812-814.

Seefeldt, C. (2003). Why read aloud? Early Childhood Today, vol/issue: 17(5), pp. 8.