When choosing a read aloud or mentor text it is important to pick books that your students will enjoy listening to, send some sort of message, and teach them different ways of writing.
First, students should enjoy the books you chose to read to them. Every class is different. Unique in their own way. You need to chose books that are tailored to them. For example, one of my students LOVES Goosebumps books. He has read a ton of them. He also writes his own scary stories. I chose to read aloud the Eerie Elementary series every Friday for the students. My student learns new ways to write his scary stories and is thrilled to listen. My other students pick up on his excitement and they cheer every Friday when I get it out. Second, the books you read could send an important message to your students. There are so many books out there that have different morals and lessons to teach. They have different audiences and themes. The books you choose to read to your students can help mold your classroom community. An example of this in my class is something we did with our read alouds in the beginning of the year. We have an amazing, smart, sweet student with diabetes. In the beginning of the year his Mom was concerned that he would be picked on because of his size and the fact that he did not want any of his peers to know about his diabetes. We assured the mother that our classroom is a family that supports one another. In order to make this student feel comfortable and teach the others that we are all different and this was okay we carefully picked books to read aloud. We read books about being different. We wanted to teach them that being different was unique and a great thing! We read books such as, “Thank You Mr. Falker”, “Hello, Goodbye Dog”, “We Are All Wonders”, “My Brother Charlie” and “I Can Be Anything”. There are so many more we can add to this list, but we picked those because they were specific to our students. The last book we chose to read was “I Am Ari” about a girl with diabetes. This student quietly sat observing how his peers would react to this story. His peers had awesome questions and supportive comments to share about this girl. Our student did not feel comfortable at the time speaking up, but now he is not ashamed of his diabetes and is his own unique star in our class. Lastly, reading and writing are intertwined. Books that you read aloud to students should be teaching them different writing genres, formats, and styles. Whenever we teach students a new concept we start off by showing an example and modeling that skill. The same goes with writing. We need to show students examples of the type of writing and then dive deeper into the different author styles and formats. When I say format I mean the way the author presents the writing. If they do not see examples of these, they might not know that they can get creative with their writing. Giving as many examples as you can through books is never a bad thing. So next time you are picking out a read aloud or mentor text make sure you ask yourself:
Happy Reading :)
3 Comments
3/19/2019 06:12:11 am
Read alouds are so powerful and empowering, aren't they? And then finding the connection between reading and writing takes our instruction to a higher level. One of my favorites that I read to my 6th graders is Each Kindness by Woodson.
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Natasha
3/19/2019 06:46:41 pm
Those are such important factors to consider in choosing read aloud books. It was fun to read the examples that you shared about choosing books for your particular students.
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Tracey
3/19/2019 07:22:22 pm
You are so right-- even the simplest seeming teaching tasks are so very nuanced!
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AuthorI am a second grade teacher at Irving Elementary School in a co-taught classroom! Archives
May 2019
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