Blog #7 - Jennifer Jowers - Chapter 7 Emphasize Shared Reading

                 Shared reading is one of my favorite times of the day. I used to love it when I was in school and now I love to do it. I think my students get so much out of our shared reading time. It is not only fun for them to hear me read a story out loud but also see how I think and react as a reader. I think a lot of the time they learn more from a quick 5 minute read aloud than a 30 minute guided reading session. The best part about shared reading is how excited they get about the books. We do a lot of shared reading during the day even when we are learning our science and social studies. So many of our students do not have books at home or someone who is always able to read to them. We learn that reading to a child helps them become much more successful readers. It also helps them learn to love reading. One of my fondest memories as a child was when my mom would read to me. She always used different voices and discussed the book with me asking my favorite parts and would let me read to her (even if I was just making it up). I want my students to gain a love of learning to read and those moments we share.We try to ensure that our chosen readings go along with our units for the week.

                  We have recently started doing poetry shared reading. We have music to sing the poems too and activities that go along with them as well. The students love the songs, they are very catchy and I even catch myself singing them to my own child at home. We start off learning the song and talking about the vocabulary. Every day we replay the song and practice finding words, digraphs, word families, letters and anything else we can think of. Each child then gets their own book to practice reading and highlight words they know. We also practice word work using the words in the poem and illustrate it as well. The students have loved doing this. They look forward to it   and I can even hear them singing the song while they work.

                  We also do a shared reading that goes along with our unit they helps to explore different genres. Non-fiction seems to be their favorite but these books really stick them. I often see them getting the book on their own and I hear them reading it like I do. I really hate when we don’t get time to do them. I feel like they get so much out of it and it holds their attention so well. We also get to socialize a lot more and it seems more informal when we do this. I would hate to not be able to do my shared reading.