In Defense of the Read-Aloud: sustaining best practice

When we read aloud to our students, we model prosodic oral reading. The read aloud is a pedagogical tool and one that should happen every day in every classroom (Layne, 2015).

Prosodic reading is considered one of the hallmarks of fluent reading. When a child is reading prosodically, oral reading sounds like the music of speech with proper phrasing, pause structures, stress, rise and fall patterns, and all-around expressiveness. Fluency adds a musical quality to reading. Prosody involves appropriate phrasing, pitch, and rhythm.  ‘Prosody is essential to make oral reading meaningful and is critical for reading stories aloud, and for other oral reading presentations such as poetry reading or Reader's Theatre' (Konza, 2011).

A useful text (and easy, enjoyable read) that provides a thought-provoking guide for teachers how to engage students during read-alouds, and one that leads to lots of deep teacher discussions about read-alouds in the classroom, is the text below:

Covershot. Lane, S. (2015). In defense of the read-aloud: sustaining best practice.

This is a useful professional learning text for all primary teachers, to build skills in delivering engaging classroom read-alouds.