Chapter 9 Emphasize Shared Reading
Shared reading is probably one of my most favorite parts of
my day. This time of day is one my
students always look forward to. This is
a time where we practice phonemic awareness, model good reading strategies, and
retell and act out stories. Shared reading
is such a powerful teaching tool. I
believe that in the earlier grades we do a great job of having shared reading
experiences build into our daily schedule.
Sometimes in later grades this key component of reading instruction in
lost.
While I do like some components of our Creative Curriculum,
I feel that it is lacking in shared reading aspect. I feel that a good deal of the books are too
wordy and above my students level. My
students do not have the background knowledge to understand or comprehend these
books. I also do not like how the
framework is laid out in the curriculum where we do not read a book over a period
of time. In my opinion reading books
over and over to children helps to build confidence for children to be able to
read the book on their own and grasp important details. In another district where I taught
kindergarten we used Rigby Literacy.
This program came with tons of big books and we read the same book over
a period of two weeks during our shared reading time. After I was finished using the book during my
shared reading teaching time, I would place it in my library center. It was great to see my students use some of
the same strategies they had learned over the past two weeks and they were
pretending to be in the teaching role. I
absolutely love big books and wish that creative curriculum had more of a
selection.
Yes, our youngest readers usually get a very healthy dose of shared reading, thank goodness! When I've been in your room, it's very clear that shared reading is important and enjoyable for you and the students. You raise some good questions about shared reading is and isn't. Big books do help by allowing more kids to have eyes on text (since it's hard for all the kids to see a regular-sized read-aloud). Another way around the shortage of big books is to read digital texts together on the Promethean Board. Sites I like to use include Big Universe (subscription-based, but hopefully it will be available district-wide next year!), Unite for Literacy (free), Epic (free), Zing! (free), and, of course, the Spartanburg County Library digital resources. Maybe some of the Creative Curriculum books are available digitally on those sources, or you can find other books there that will also go along with your theme!
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