A Guide to Interactive Read Alouds & Social and Emotional Learning
Assumptions are not always safe to make, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an educator who would argue the value of reading aloud to students. While educators across the globe have various claims on how best to teach reading, the one thing they can all agree on is the importance of reading aloud.
Regardless of age, we all love a good read aloud. For many of us, some of our favorite memories are gathered around a text with our classmates and listening to our teacher read, taking us on journeys beyond the brick and mortar classroom.
Read alouds allow us to meet people like us (and not like us), learn how to develop empathy for others, and realize the world is a little less lonely.
When we read aloud to children, we create a shared experience to think through ideas.
For these reasons and so many more, reading aloud is how we systematically ensure that we teach children about emotional intelligence, mindset, soft skills, and everyday life skills. It's also where social and emotional learning are front and center of classroom experiences in addition to literacy.
Essentially, reading aloud is a win, win, win, win! Keep reading for 4 steps outlining quick tips and techniques you can take to the classroom. First, let’s get clear on what we mean by reading aloud.
Reading aloud is just one of the many structures of a balanced literacy classroom.
During an interactive read aloud, we (the teacher) are the only ones with a copy of the text. We’re doing the heavy lifting here.
We are decoding (saying the words aloud).
We’re reading them fluently with phrasing and prosody in a way that reveals meaning.
We’re modeling comprehension work as we occasionally pause to model thinking patterns for students, so we can hear how readers think through and make meaning of the words they say.
We’re essentially modeling a proficient reading (and thinking) process for students by creating space for readers to develop their comprehension thinking strategies without navigating the code of the text.
Students are listening to the words of the story AND listening to our thoughts about the story.
Finally, (perhaps one of the many reasons why we love to read aloud) is that we set students up to interact with one another. Together, as a community, we’re collaboratively navigating our reactions, questions, wonderings, and theories.
Most teachers, regardless of what age they teach, make an effort to prioritize 15 - 20 minutes daily to read aloud to students. (If you’re currently studying your daily and weekly scheduling, check out more of my ideas here).
Step 1 - Selecting Books
First things first, YOU should really like the book you are reading aloud. After 11 years of living in New York City and a handful of friendships with performing artists, I’ve learned that “everything reads” not only on a Broadway stage but in your classroom, too.
When you’re curious, students will be curious. When you react, students will react. Select a text you’ll be able to (dramatically) perform during read-aloud time.
Here are a few other things to keep in mind when selecting texts to read aloud:
Consider the affinities of the students in your classroom community. What are their brilliant quirks that you can support through a text selection?
Consider your curriculum and match the text type with the current cycle of study. If you are teaching students how to navigate historical fiction, select a read-aloud text that is an example of historical fiction and the thinking patterns readers use to make meaning of the text.
Consider length. Would it be better to read several shorter texts across the cycle of study or one long text? (If you’re not sure, I would nudge you towards reading several shorter texts so that you have the opportunity to stack them strategically and set up cross-text conversations). If you’re looking for a few more read-aloud texts, check out this blog post where I share a few of my favorites!
Push the envelope. I mean this in all the layers you can imagine. Since you are (quite literally) decoding the text, the complexity of the text can be pushed a bit because you are conducting the decoding part of the reading process. As students are listening to the text, their brain has the space to conduct the thinking work that over time will transfer to their own comprehension in their independent books.
Character and topic considerations. Is there a character who experiences intense emotions that might open the door to conversations about the normalcy of experiencing intense emotions, creating a gateway into discussions around emotional intelligence? Is there a topic of debate that has clear perspectives? You can create a text set that teaches students how to identify bias and perspectives in texts and how to navigate multiple dimensions and complexities of a topic.
Still searching for more texts? Think outside of the box. What if you listened to thirty seconds of a podcast, hit pause, modeled your thinking, and then asked students to share their thinking, too? What if you studied an infographic together, watched a two-minute video, or listened to a song and read the lyrics?
Reading aloud a variety of texts models an authentic reading life full of a variety of texts and thinking patterns within them.
Step 2 - Pause and Ponder
Reading is thinking, so my “pause and ponder” technique is your reminder to model a thinking process during your read aloud.
When we read aloud to students, we have the perfect opportunity to model how proficient readers think simultaneously as they speak and understand the words. It happens simultaneously for us as adult readers because we’ve been proficient at it for so many years. But sometimes, when we’re proficient in something, it can be challenging to break down the process.
Reading aloud lets us model breaking apart the process that readers take in comprehending texts. The key here is using our read aloud text to model thinking patterns that can transfer to any book.
When students return to their independent reading, they’ll be reading a different book, not the same book as your read aloud text. So how do you set up that transfer to happen?
Grab a stack of sticky notes, your favorite pen, and a text you want to read aloud to students.
When I’m preparing to read aloud to students, I read the text BEFORE reading it to students. This way, I know how the text is built, places the text requires a specific set of skills to understand, and opportunities to engage readers.
Also, reading the text ahead of time also serves as a rehearsal opportunity for me. I can plan places to perform the text (see step 3 for more drama 🤗).
Here’s a quick win you can try tomorrow when you read aloud: place a sticky note on the part of the text (directly on the page) that calls on you to do some thinking. Check out this chart for a few examples of thinking patterns you can model for students.
Next, there’s a bit of an algorithm I use with my sticky notes:
One part sentence frame or thought pattern + One part text-specific
With this balance and time, students will start to hear thinking patterns repeated, and then I can coach them to apply those same thinking patterns to their independent reading books of choice. Here’s an example of a sticky note that I prepared ahead of time, and it serves as a reminder to me while I’m reading it aloud to pause and teach by thinking aloud.
Here’s another example of a sticky note that I plan ahead of time. I look for places in the text that set up students for success in their interactions with the text, and with one another.
Step 3 - Perform it!
My good friend, storyteller, author, and colleague, Antonio Sacre, has taught me a few storytelling performance techniques you might want to add to your repertoire, too. Antonio suggests we look for places where we can add a bit of drama and performance to read aloud experiences as a way to increase engagement and boost comprehension and thinking patterns.
Some examples are:
Change your voice. Even if it's just an octave higher, an octave lower, and your normal tone. Voila! You’ve got three character voices in a fiction book or a news reporter and a field expert in a nonfiction book.
Add a gesture. This includes facial expressions (especially your eyes so that students can see emotions even when wearing masks), or maybe gestures students can participate in (ex. With Three Billy Goats Gruff, we can all motion with our hands as each goat trots across the bridge).
Alternate your volume. Vary from a whisper to shout and watch students lean in and wonder with you.
Add a dramatic pause. Add a lingering pause to build tension in the scene of a plot or to pause and think when an alternative point of view in a nonfiction text is offered.
Vary the pace. Read slowly or quickly based on each scene of the plot!
Step 4 - Make it Interactive
Part of embedding social and emotional learning into our day-to-day interactions is engineering opportunities for students to interact with one another, practice their self-regulation, and soft skills of teamwork, patience, and contribution. A wise principal once told me, “The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.” #truestory.
During interactive read aloud, instead of a “call and response” routine where one student speaks directly to you (and if I were in your classroom I would be falling asleep, or my mind would be wandering on a brain trip!), let’s think of more collective and collaborative conversations that engage everyone in the room.
For a quick win this week, pair students in partnerships and set them up to turn to one another and share ideas as thinking partners. Even if you are thinking through Covid parameters, collaborative conversations are still very possible.
Use the room. Spread out. Not only will students have the chance to share their thinking, but they'll also have the chance to practice active listening and responding (not to mention moving and not sitting slouched in a seat for hours on end).
A byproduct to you, these collaborative, partnership conversations serve as quick assessments to hear thinking patterns that are often invisible in the teaching of reading. By listening to partnerships, you can coach their language, vocabulary, thinking patterns, and mindset.
Win, win, win, win!
A few ways you can plan for interacting with the text and with one another:
Turn and talk to a partner
Act-it-out
Sketch it
Stop and jot ideas (on a sticky note, whiteboard, or reading notebook)
After students have built their confidence in collaborative conversations with their partners, add a layer or two by combining partnerships and form read aloud book clubs. Stay tuned for more on this and the importance of collaborative conversations in your read aloud in a blog post to come!
Wrapping It Up
There you have it; I can’t wait to hear how it goes! Drop me a line on social media, or a quick email to let me know. If you’re still thinking through more ideas or you’re studying read aloud as your personal professional study goal, I’ve got a few more resources to support you.
Take me on a walk with you - and listen to a few more ideas here on this episode of the Read Write Think (and Listen) podcast.
Here’s a video of me reading aloud - one of my favorites - Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall
Check out my good friend Rebecca Bellingham and her thoughts on why we should all be reading aloud to children in her Ted Talk, inspired by her latest book, The Artful Read Aloud.
Here’s my bestie Gravity Goldberg and I talking more about reading aloud and how it can support you in figuring out what to teach next from What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow in Nonfiction.
And…from What Do I Teach Readers Tomorrow, in Fiction
My friend, computer scientist Dr. Sharon Jones and I are working on JUST this - read aloud, social and emotional learning, and computer science all wrapped up in one gigantic bow! Sign up, follow, and check out Living Your Learning for a release of a tool you can take to your classroom later this month. AND check out the integration of thinking aloud in read aloud and computational thinking - if you work in a STEAM or STEM school - you’ll want to check this out!
Looking for more? Grab your professional study notebook, your favorite pen, a few thinking partners, (we’ll provide the snacks) and join Kristi Mraz and me at our summer institutes. We’ll have several days dedicated to unpacking, reading aloud, and preparing the first few read aloud texts to launch 2022-2023! Check out more here. We’ll see you there!
