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Allison Hernandez

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Allison Hernandez

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Allison Hernandez

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ANa Canales

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Ana Canales

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Ana Canales

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EHE Distance Education and Learning Design

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Ana Canales

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Ana Canales

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Allison Hernandez

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Ana Canales

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Allison Hernandez

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Rebecca Gonzalez
This article personally resonated with me because I had a discussion with my case study student about oral reading. She says she hates reading out loud to the point where she will ask a friend to read for her during whole group. It causes an emotional reaction in her, but is potentially slowing her down on the 5th grade STAAR

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Allison Hernandez

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Rebecca Gonzalez
One critique of the article is that it does not account for the ways technology can be used as a stepping stone for face-to-face interaction, rather than something to omit the social aspect of reading.

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Rebecca Gonzalez
When establishing ground rules of talk norms, this video shows the goal of setting up a classroom that respects the ideas and differences of others to achieve a mutual well-rounded understanding of the text.

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Rebecca Gonzalez
One question I had about the article is how can it benefit older students to read aloud and well. I found this article that begins to answer that question.

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Jim Trelease is the author of the respected, Read-Aloud Handbook, which some parents have called the "read aloud Bible." The book is packed with information - from what really makes kids love reading, to tips for luring kids away from electronics and onto the page, to hundreds of read aloud titles. The Handbook's seventh edition will be published in the spring of 2013 and, at 71 years old, Trelease says it will be his last. We reached Trelease recently in his home in Connecticut and asked him to explain why reading aloud is essential for kids of all ages.

Can you explain the link between reading aloud and school success?

It's long established in science and research: the child who comes to school with a large vocabulary does better than the child who comes to school with little familiarity with words and a low vocabulary.

Why is that? If you think about it, in the early years of school, almost all instruction is oral. In kindergarten through second and third grades, kids aren't reading yet, or are just starting, so it's all about the teacher talking to the kids. This isn't just true in reading but in all subjects; the teacher isn't telling kids to open their textbooks and read chapter three. The teaching is oral and the kids with the largest vocabularies have an advantage because they understand most of what the teacher is saying. The kids with small vocabularies don't get what is going on from the start, and they're likely to fall further and further behind as time goes on.

How does a child develop a large vocabulary even before school starts? Children who are spoken to and read to most often are the ones with the largest vocabularies. If you think about it, you can't get a word out of the child's mouth unless he has heard it before. For example, the word "complicated." A child isn't going to say the word unless he has heard it before - and in fact to remember it, a child probably has to hear it multiple times. (That's not true with swear words, of course. If a child hears his parent swear he'll remember it the first time, and happily repeat it whenever he gets the chance.) But kids have to hear most words multiple times, so it's important that their parents talk to and around them from the time they are very young, because that's how they learn words.

Reading aloud: an advertisement for books

So parents need to talk to their children - but reading aloud is important, too. Because where are children going to be hearing the most words? In conversation, we tend to use verbal shorthand, not full sentences. But the language in books is very rich, and in books there are complete sentences. In books, newspapers, and magazines, the language is more complicated, more sophisticated. A child who hears more sophisticated words has a giant advantage over a child who hasn't heard those words.

Reading aloud also increases a child's attention span. Finally, reading aloud to your child is a commercial for reading. When you read aloud, you're whetting a child's appetite for reading. The truth is, what isn't advertised in our culture gets no attention. And awareness has to come before desire. A child who has been read to will want to learn to read herself. She will want to do what she sees her parents doing. But if a child never sees anyone pick up a book, she isn't going to have that desire.

Why do you think it's important to read to older kids, too?

People often say to me, '"My child is in fourth grade and he already knows how to read, why should I read to him?" And I reply, "Your child may be reading on a fourth grade level, but what level is he listening at?"

A child's reading level doesn't catch up to his listening level until eighth grade. You can and should be reading seventh grade books to fifth grade kids. They'll get excited about the plot and this will be a motivation to keep reading. A fifth grader can enjoy a more complicated plot than she can read herself, and reading aloud is really going to hook her, because when you get to chapter books, you're getting into the real meat of print - there is really complicated, serious stuff going on that kids are ready to hear and understand, even if they can't read at that level yet.

Reading aloud to your kids is also are good way to grapple with difficult issues. For example, you can tell your child, "I don't want you to hang out with so and so," but that's a lecture that will probably go in one ear and out the other. But if you read a book about a kid who gets in trouble by hanging out with the wrong crowd, your child is going to experience that directly, and she's going to experience it with you at her side, and you can talk about it together. You can ask questions like: "Do you think the boy made the right choice?" "Do you think that girl was really her friend?" When you talk about a book together, it's not a lecture, it's more like a coach looking at a film with his players, going over the plays to find out what went right and what went wrong.

Books to blow your mind

Someone once said that books allow you to examine explosive situations without having them blowing up in your face. Books allow you to develop awareness of people outside your experience and develop a sense of empathy. When I was growing up, I wasn't rich, but by reading books I learned that there are kids out there who are a lot worse off than me, kids growing up with real disadvantages. The wider your world, the more you understand and the more you can empathize.

Another advantage of reading aloud: if you weren't a reader yourself growing up, reading to your kids gives you the chance to meet the child you used to be and read the books you never read. I hear from people all the time, especially fathers, who say, "Wow! I never read The Secret Garden as a child, and I had no idea what I was missing!"

I've had that experience myself, and I was an avid reader as a child, but I mostly read boys' books, like The Call of the Wild. I didn't read the classics like The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy, so it was great to have the chance to read them with my kids.

Do you think teachers should be reading aloud to kids even in high school?

Yes, because if you stop advertising, you stop selling. Kids have to read for school but that's not an advertisement for reading. Most of the material kids read in school, no one would read for pleasure. And if all your reading is tied to work, you develop a sweat mentality to reading, so by time you graduate you can't wait to stop reading. You become a school-time reader, not a life-time reader. Of course, kids have to do a certain amount of reading that's tied to work, but you don't want kids to forget that there are books out there to make you laugh, make you cry, and move the soul.

The writer Phyllis Theroux once said that high school is the last stop for gas before the Beltway of adulthood, so the lessons kids get in high school are really important. But in the present climate of testing, there is so much pressure on teachers that few take the time to read aloud. And that's a real loss. Standardized tests have nothing to do with real life, which means that schools are becoming divorced from reality. The challenges I encounter every day as an adult have nothing to do with anything I learned on a test in school. When you reach a crisis in your life, or you encounter someone who needs help, how you react has a lot to do with your sense of empathy and compassion - experience with multiple-choice test questions is not going to help at all.

So teachers are torn between what they know is right and what they're forced to do by regulations. If kids' only experience reading as drudgery, then they're going to avoid it as much as possible. Of course, teachers are busy and have a lot of material to cover, but even if they only devote five minutes a day to the pleasure of reading, at the end of the year when you add those five minutes up, that will be what most kids remember.

Are you disturbed by how ubiquitous electronics are and their impact on reading?

Screens are addictive. You push a button and magic happens - what could be better than that? So it's easy for kids to get hooked on screens.

Parents need to set limits, because kids aren't going to limit themselves. In too many households, one parent is watching the game, the other parent is online shopping, and the kid is in front of a screen, and before you know it, the kid hasn't done any reading in years and the family's intellectual worth is going down the drain. Boys play more video games than girls but girls spend hours Facebooking, instant messaging, and texting - probably more than boys do. The average teen spends 90 minutes a day text messaging, and that's the average, which means lots of kids are doing even more.

The distracted generation

We're entering an age unparalleled since the age of Guttenberg; the world is changing faster than we can keep up with. Today, school districts that used to watch kids suffering as they hauled home 20 to 30 pounds of textbooks are turning to electronic tablets. A student can read a social studies textbook on the iPad. and tap on a hyperlink to, say, watch a PBS special on the Great Depression.

That's the good news. The bad news is that there is evidence that we don't remember information as well when we read it on a screen. Yet people are on screens all the time. We're raising the most distracted generation in the history of the world. The more distractions you add to the agenda, the less well you think. Technology may save space, weight, and time, but there is no science showing that it will save children's minds, especially if they spend all their time on screen and never open a book. So parents have to play a big role. It's up to parents to limit screen time, and to keep reading to kids and continue to plant and encourage their interest in books and reading.
Books to read aloud by grade: Read aloud books for third graders Read aloud books for fourth graders Read aloud books for fifth graders

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The benefits of reading aloud - even for older kids

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Educator Jim Trelease explains why reading aloud to your child, no matter what her age, is the magic bullet for creating a lifelong reader.

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Rebecca Gonzalez
Reading should open the door for face-to-face conversations! Whether this is through readers' theater, discussion of ideas, it is important to balance this with integrating technology in our classrooms!

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Miranda Martinez
talk is the heart of classroom life

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give plenty of wait time

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Miranda Martinez

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Miranda Martinez

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Miranda Martinez
it's recommended teachers pose authentic questions to promote dialogue

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Rebecca Gonzalez
A running record is one way the text suggests to evaluate oral reading

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EHE Distance Education and Learning Design

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Running Record Assessment with a 6-Year-Old Boy

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when you try to keep up while doing running records

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Brittany Perkins

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Brittany Perkins

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Brittany Perkins

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Brittany Perkins

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"Long and windingly"

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productive talk

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popcorn reading can be socially threatening.

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Arlene Perez

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productive talk

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constructively challenging each others ideas can carry educational conversations to places like the playground.

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Student led context

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Oral, silent, choral reading- all children are different!

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Miscues are useful.

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Johnston
Miscues- provide valuable insight to student's learning development.

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Johnston
Miscues- provide valuable insight to student's learning development.

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The biggest difference between a literature circle and a book club is that the book club primarily focuses on comprehension of the story, while a literature circle explores not only comprehension, but also other aspects of literature, such as the author's word choices and the reader's connection to the story.

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Literature circles have become the cornerstone for many reading programs. Studies have shown that when implemented, using this structure in the classroom has a very positive impact on students' attitudes towards reading, as well their reading abilities. Here we will explore literature circles. We will learn what they are, why you should implement them in your classroom, the teachers' role, as well as each job students must complete while in their group.
What is a Literature Circle?
In literature circles students gather together in a small group to discuss a piece of literature. Literature circles allow students to take control of their own learning. Each reading group selects their own book and each group member is given a role or a job to complete. Similar to a , students get the opportunity to discuss and reflect what they read in the story or chapter with their group, and engage in critical thinking.
Why Should K-12 Classrooms Implement Them?
Here are three reasons why all classrooms should use literature circles.

1. Students get the opportunity to have a voice in what they are learning. They get to choose their own reading materials. Granted, the teacher allows them to choose between a few books, but it's still a choice the students get to make. Research has shown that when students are offered a choice, they tend to be more motivated to learn, which leads to deeper engagement.

2. Students gain independence and get to learn from their peers. Much like cooperative learning, literature circles make students depend upon their peers. They teach students to use each other as resources to help them complete their task.

3. Students get a chance to voice their opinion in a social setting. Most of the school day is spent listening to the teacher teach. Literature circles offer students the opportunity to voice their opinion, and work with, and talk to students they may never talk to out of school.
What is the Teacher's Role?

Serve as a facilitator.

Develop groups where students will have the opportunity to succeed.

Provide a variety of books from one theme or one author for students to choose from.

Explain expectations of the literature circle.

Provide all of the materials.

Create extension projects, such as readers theater.

Keep the group on task and provide ideas for discussion.

Literature Circle Roles
Here is a list of literature circle roles and the task each student must complete for each job.

Discussion Director - Your job is to come up with a list of questions that your group may want to discuss about the chapter you are reading. Your task is to have students in your group talk about the big ideas and share their reactions to the chapter. Here are three examples of general questions you can ask.

1. What is the most important idea in this section?

2. Predict what you think will happen next in the book.

3. What surprised you the most in this chapter?

Connector - Your job is to find connections between the chapter that you just read and the outside world. Your task is to connect what is happening in your own life (school, home, etc.) with the book.

Illustrator - Your job as the illustrator is to draw a picture of something that happened in the chapter you just read. You can draw a graphic organizer like a story map, or draw a sketch.

Literary Illuminator - Your job is to choose a few parts of the chapter that you thought were special, and that your group would like to hear read again. You decide which part (s) is worth hearing again. You can read it aloud or have the group reread it to themselves.

Word Wizard (Vocabulary Searcher) - Your job is to be on the lookout for important words, or words that are unfamiliar throughout the text. You can use a dictionary to find out the meaning, then put the meaning into your own words and discuss the word(s) with your group.

The best way for students to determine which job they must complete is to have them roll a die. On a sheet of paper assign each job a number 1-5 and when the student rolls the die, they look to see which job they must complete. Each week students meet for literature circles they roll the die and record which job they must complete.
What do you think of literature circles? Do you use them in your classroom? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. Janelle Cox is an education writer who uses her experience and knowledge to provide creative and original writing in the field of education. Janelle holds a Master's of Science in Education from the State University of New York College at Buffalo. She is also the Elementary Education Expert for , as well as a contributing writer to TeachHUB.com and TeachHUB Magazine. You can follow her at Twitter , or on Facebook at Empowering K6 Educators.

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Literature circles have become the cornerstone for many reading programs. Studies have shown that when implemented, using this structure in the classroom has a very positive impact on students' attitudes towards reading, as well their reading abilities. Here we will explore literature circles.

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Website has useful resources, tips, and shared experiences for educators.

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"Before you speak, listen." -William A. Ward Listening With Purpose As I listen in on the student conversations occurring around the classroom, I notice that my students have a firm grasp on the basics of listening and speaking. They turn their attention toward the speaker and maintain a calm...

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Responsive Classroom is an evidence-based approach to teaching that focuses on the strong link between academic success and social-emotional learning (SEL).

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By Katia Estrada

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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by: Ashley Carden

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