Last Thursday night I joined #g2great Twitter chat around read aloud. Steven Layne led the discussion in a chat hosted by Dr. Mary Howard, Jenn Hayhurst, and Amy Brennan. Check out the #g2great team blog for In Defense of Read Aloud: Sustaining Best Practice (7 important considerations for read aloud. The chat has me thinking about one of my favorite things: read aloud. So... At the end of the day, I stop by Nichole Berkey's classroom to drop off information for one of our reading ambassadors. Nichole's room is always a favorite stop at the end of the day. When you walk in the door there is a sense of calm as students gather together on the carpet. Nicole is perched on a stool with students surrounding her feet, a book open as she reads page after page of the current chapter book they are reading. Her third graders hang onto every word. Every time I walk into her room I want to just sit down on the floor and join them.
Since moving to a reading intervention position in my building, read aloud is one of the things I miss the most. I miss starting our day with a read aloud, reading aloud after lunch (that was always my favorite), and the days when our classroom managed to end in a read aloud like Nichole's (that was always tricky). I miss peppering in poetry. I miss the read aloud's sprinkled across the day in the opening moments of our workshops. I miss the community that is built around the books we experience together.
As a teacher, I found that read alouds could support many of our learning conversations and anchor our thinking. It's a gift to be able to use the author's words to support teaching and learning, but this chat reminded me that there is also a caution: there still should be places in our day where we just read aloud for the joy of the story. There should be places where we just sit back, without interruption, and enjoy the book for pleasure - where the words fall off the page and into the ears of children, where we laugh, gasp, and wonder together.
The #g2great chat and follow-up post had me thinking about some of my favorite read alouds. I decided to create a Pinterest board of favorite read alouds. These books never let me down with a group of children. I'll continue to grow this collection when I get back to my books at school. (It's spring break so these are the ones I remembered.) I hope you'll share some of your favorites in the comments below.
Follow Cathy 's board Read Aloud on Pinterest.
