Shared Reading Intro
Purpose
Shared reading allows students to actively participate in reading texts that they cannot yet read on their own. Share reading helps students learn about concepts of print-how reading works. During shared reading, students follow along and read a text aloud with the teacher. Typically the teacher models and students and teacher re-read the text numerous times. Materials can include "big books," individual /shared copies of the same easy picture book, chart stories (including teacher or class generated texts), experiences stories, poems, or song lyrics. Texts may be in print or electronic form (i.e., digital texts on a computer). Often texts used for shared reading have a repeating or predictable pattern. During or after reading, the teacher may highlight concepts of print, teaching students "how reading works" such as reading left to right, attending to punctuation, noticing how letters and words work in text:
"Where should we begin reading?"
"The boy's name in this story is Tom. Can you find the word Tom? How do you know?(Starts with "t" upper case "T"...)
"This is a question mark to let us know this is an asking sentence. Let's read it again so that it sounds like we are asking."
Goals of shared reading include to:
- support emergent readers' engagement with whole texts that they cannot yet read on their own
- provide enjoyable and authentic experiences with reading with high levels of support
- model and help students learn and practice "how reading works" (e.g., voice-print match, concept of a letter, a word, a sentence; left to right, top to bottom directionality, strategies for constructing meaning, recognize known letters/words in whole text)
- model and support students' fluency (phrasing, rate, intonation/expression)
