Interactive Read Aloud

The question that I have chosen for my inquiry project is: How can you improve performance in a first grade classroom with Guided Reading? I am interested in this since I teach first grade. As a first grade teacher I am always looking for ways to improve my class’s performance. Guided reading offers support to the students as they are learning. Rogoff suggested that “adults support children’s learning by structuring the task’s difficulty level, jointly participating in problem solving, focusing the learner’s attention to the task, and motivating the learner.” (Frey & Fisher, 2010, 84).

I did this on Friday, September 23rd, on my way to the University Fair downtown. Granted, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to do this assignment because I was exposed to a variety of people throughout the journey. At first, I felt hesitant to begin reading aloud, despite my previous excitement. Eventually, I began to read loudly and

“Anderson, what’s the DOW stock valued at today?” inquires a wealthy businessman, with a hint of concern. In the world of wealth management, this is not an uncommon question, considering that stock holders obsess about their return on investment. Similarly, in the world of academia and educational research, authorities obsess about effective instruction and frequently ask, “what is the current value of literacy?” Educator Jim Trelease uses his book to answer this (The Read-Aloud Handbook, 2013). Academically, Trelease gives readers a synopsis of why classrooms need reading aloud time and how they can capitalize it; in addition to the facts, Jim uses a personal tone to remind readers that literacy education is an investment in everyone’s future.

Within their table groups which had been set up deliberately by the teacher to get children with similar reading levels together, the children had to explore different features of the book. One group would work on questions they wanted to ask the characters, another would take in turns to read the book and highlight words they did not understand or had trouble reading. Tennant (2014: 165) tells us that the text used during guided reading should be challenging but the children should still be capable of decoding it. I observed this to be true during my school placement because the children were able to show a wide understanding of what was happening within the book however when they were asked questions about how the character was feeling or what they think would happen next, they took a bit more time to try and get an understanding of this. Tennant (2016) states that “the teacher’s task is to deepen the reader’s understanding of the text by initially ascertaining what sense the reader has made of the text just after having read it”. Tennant’s statement can be evaluated as useful for teaching a good level of guided reading because teachers have to broaden the children’s knowledge of the text. My own observations seemed to be a success because each group was paired with an adult and each adult was drawing out information from pupils by asking questions that got them thinking. Not only were they getting an idea of what children already knew about the text but they

For a read aloud the teacher is in control, so the teacher will be reading the book while the students will be listening to the story. The level of the book should be at or above the students level. The stories that are read to the students should include a wide variety of genres for the students to enjoy. The teacher should be modeling what good readers do. Students should be able to see the pictures/text.

For the next read aloud I would definitely do things different. For an examples I would read the book aloud before I do it in front of the class, to see how long it takes. Then I would come up with questions and have the questions simple enough for them to understand whats being asked. But keep the question good enough for them to know if they comprehension the story. And ask questions throughout the story to keep their interest with me. I could tell some of the student was not interesting with the book I reading to them.

I learned from this video that I need to be more mindful of the ways in which I will teach my future students about reading and decoding text. I need to show them how to look closely at details within the story so that they understand the shift in mood/tone, grammar and word usage. It is important for students to read at a pace that they are comfortable with in order to gain full meaning of the book or story. Also, it is crucial that they read at his or her own pace in order to make sure they do not miss details that could be important.

I always had a really hard time finding motivation to read during school. I liked the idea of a good story but I hated the act of actually reading. One other major problem was that I never thought a book would be good enough to commit that much time to it. That being said, having a my classmates suggest a book for me or being able to use their comments and review to help pick out a book would have been super helpful. Instead of trying to take the word of my teacher, I would be able to have a review or a suggestion that I would have seemed to be much more relatable. Also, being a history major, I feel that using the reading out-loud method would be really helpful. A lot of the material I would potentially be teaching would cover a lot of big names of people and places, so to work together and read aloud so they were able to hear the names out loud and hear how they were supposed to be pronounced would be a major help for them.

I also was able to put a plan into action to improve their reading as well. Adrianna really enjoying this task, she did a great job during the different test. This made it easier for me to evaluate and interpret the information I needed to learn. The most difficult part for me during this evaluation were the leveled passages. Before I begin these test, I knew Adrianna did not like reading. My job was to get her to read with confidence not matter how many mistakes she thought she would make. I loved doing this because I knew that this may be one of reason Adrianna did not enjoy reading. In most cases she students just need a little encouragement. This final case study was perfect for ending off the semester and moving on to the next steps in my

For the second interactive read aloud, teachers should read the book for a second time

The first point is reading out loud, I remember being scared to death that the teacher would call on me to read. I was never a good reader and I didn't have the best vocabulary, so I tried to avoid it as much as possible. In the article they talk about how children would get anxiety or scared to get called on to read. They dreaded it, peers would laugh and giggle when the student would mess up, and soon reading became something that students learned to not enjoy. Choosing only the students that volunteer to read

Teachers should teach reading in, fun, exciting, and research based findings in order to help students with their comprehension. The teacher from the video "Rick's Reading Workshop: Mini-Lesson", did an exemplary job of executing all three of these factors to positively impact his students comprehension. His class was built on the foundation of wanting all his students to have a love of reading, because he believed that when students are engaged and having fun they are more susceptible to comprehend and ask questions. He read to the students in a tone that was highly engaging, and overall a joy to listen to, the students were actively engaged and with the teachers enthusiasm they never had a chance to stray from topic. I also appreciate

Interactive shared book reading is a practice that adults can use when reading with children, which are intended to enhance young children’s language and literacy skills (Phillips, Norris, & Anderson, 2008). This practice can be used in an individual, small group, school or center-based setting. Most of the environments where this practice is taking place, according to the WWC Intervention Report, are day care centers or HeadStart classrooms with children aged 3 to 5 and often minority racial groups of low socioeconomic status (Bochna, 2010). This is implemented by an adult reader reading aloud, making sure the students can easily see, and using different structured interactive techniques to engage the children

“Read- alouds can be delivered in a variety of modes including prerecorded audio, a human reader in an individual or group setting, or computerized text-to-speech”, (Buzick, Stone, 2014). “The effect of read-aloud accommodations was also significantly stronger when the test was read by human proctors than when it was read by video/audio players or computers”, (Li, 2014). Having a human proctor give the read-aloud allows students to hear and see their emotions verses hearing a video/audio player which are usually monotone. I think that hearing a human proctor also keeps the students engaged because they can actually hear the difference in the tones the proctor is using along with telling the difference in the readers emotions. Many students with disabilities have a hard time deciphering emotions, so this could help with that as

Since Lilly had several weaknesses such as lack of motivation/engagement, skipping words, and not achieving fluency I would love to provide her with an interactive shared reading to improve her weaknesses. An interactive shared reading experience is a great strategy to encourage the student to join in/share the reading with a book while the student is guided and supported by the teacher. With an interactive shared reading, I will be able to model