Reconsidering Read-Aloud

Read-aloud is a time of enjoyment and relaxation for teachers and students--a time when powerful, effective teaching and rigorous learning can take place while keeping the pleasures of reading front and center.

Reconsidering Read-Aloud invites you to examine both the spontaneous and planned conversations that take place around read-aloud. If these conversations are led by a teacher who knows books and authors as well as language arts standards, outcomes, and objectives, read-aloud will be a time of teaching that doesn't need a script or a lesson plan to validate it and learning that doesn't need a product to measure it.

Drawing on her career as a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher and her knowledge of children's literature, Mary Lee Hahn shows you how to make your read-alouds count. She providesclassroom vignettes that demonstrate how read-aloud conversations are teachable moments;a practical application of the Apprenticeship Model of teaching, including an appendix that shows how the concepts modeled during read-aloud workshop can be used independently by students in Reading at Home assignments;suggestions for choosing books, including an appendix that charts a collection of popular read-alouds;examples of teaching strategies that work especially well during all read-alouds, fiction and nonfiction;a discussion of the role of evaluation and assessment in read-aloud.

Reconsidering Read-Aloud is a compelling example of the richness that can be found in this daily classroom event. With a love of literature, knowledge of her students, and the desire to teach kids to read more deeply, every teacher can bring the joy of teaching and learning during read-aloud to the classroom.