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Primary Junior Literacy Teacher Resources

A guide to resources that support the teaching and learning of Language, Grades 1 to 6.

See Ontario Teachers Use Read Alouds

The Learning Exchange (Student Achievement Division, Ministry of Education) is a deep source of professional learning content for teachers with the huge added benefit of examples and demos that are in the context of Ontario classrooms and the Ontario curriculum.

On The Learning Exchange site you can see Ontario teachers using read-alouds http://thelearningexchange.ca/tag/read-aloud/ for a variety of purposes.  The video below is the 5 m clip on Read Aloud from the Snapshots of Effective Practice series.

Read Aloud from The Learning Exchange (1) on Vimeo.

What Expert Teachers Do

  1. Select texts based on the interests and needs of the students in the class; select high quality children's literature
  2. Preview and practice the text to effectively model fluency; embed pauses for questioning; preview difficult vocabulary
  3. Establish a clear purpose for hte book and lesson (for ex. you are focusing on prediction today)
  4. Provide a model of fluent oral reading; no stumbling over difficult names
  5. Demonstrate an appropriately high level of animation and expression during read-alouds -- capture the characters' emotions and moods.
  6. Employ strategic use of book discussion before, during, and after the reading. Use a range of questions during reading to check in that students are understanding the information and making connections.
  7. Connect the read-aloud to independent reading or writing occurring during the day. 

From Fisher, D., Flood, J., Lapp, D., & Frey, N. (2004). Interactive read-alouds: Is there a common set of implementation practices? The Reading Teacher, 58.1

Areas that the non-expert teachers struggled wth:

  • Preview and practice
  • Model fluent oral reading
  • Connect read-alouds to independent reading and writing
  • Establish the purpose of the read-aloud clearing