Hawkins: Routman, Shared Reading

I love incorporating shared reading in all subjects.  Moving into a 3^rd grade classroom this year, I was unsure if shared reading with students sitting on the carpet was appropriate with students at this age.  But my students still love gathering at the carpet to listen to a book being read to them.  Shared reading does allow all students to listen to books being read without the worry and discouragement of reading out loud or the embarrassment of not pronouncing works correctly.   This is especially helpful for my low reader.  Shared reading also allows students to participate in the question/answer process without fear of not learning what the meaning of what the author is writing about.

During share readings, the teacher can include and demonstrate many of the following:

-fluency (phrasing, appropriate intonation).

-The author’s craft (figures of speech, leads, endings).

-How to figure out vocabulary (phonics plus meaning).

-Character motivation and behavior (how characters change).

-Confirming (predictions, difficult vocabulary).

-How to read nonfiction.

How texts work.

Summarizing.                                     Making connections.

Predicting.                                          Inferring.

Asking questions.                               Learning new information.

Enjoying reading.

The book models how to appropriately conduct a shared reading lesson.   I do most of the things explained in this text while I am using shared reading in a lesson.  The one thing that I need to incorporate more into my shared reading is turn and partner talk.   I forget about doing this aspect of shared reading every time that I read a book to the whole class.   I do frequently stop and ask many questions while reading a book to the group because I want to make sure that each student understands what a word or phrase means.   This chapter provides a reminder of strategies that I need to be using with students everyday with shared reading.