Shared Reading is not just for primary students!
Shared Reading is for ALL students at ALL grade levels!
All students in EVERY grade level should have opportunities to co-create meaning WITH the teacher.
And here's why...
Shared Reading should be part of the literacy block everyday!
It doesn't matter what grade level you teach. Readers are experiencing texts with increasing difficulty. We cannot just plop a text in front of them and say, 'go forth and read'.
Readers need experiences.
Readers need to see how proficient readers approach texts.
Readers need guidance through the increasingly difficult texts before independence is expected.
When teachers select a text for shared reading the choices are based on student needs to better comprehend grade level appropriate texts. Choices should be based on literary elements, structures, devices, etc that are instructional requirements. A shared text does not have to be a full story or article. Shared reading texts could be a poem, or an excerpt from a longer piece of literature or article.
When teachers create time each day for Shared Reading experiences with their students, the children are provided guidance from a proficient reader to demonstrate and facilitate strategies to deepen understanding and comprehension of a text. When we are learning something new, it's always helpful to have a shared experience first. We must approach reading and writing in the same way for our students at ALL grade levels.
When Shared Reading experiences are a daily part of the literacy block, students are provided more opportunities to have a literature discussion facilitated by the proficient reader in the room. Students need opportunities to observe how a proficient reader approaches text to build understanding. When the students and teachers build those moments together, students learn.
When a proficient reader tackles a new text, he/she usually revisits the text on multiple occasions to build understanding and test out new theories about the content. Shared Reading experiences provide these opportunities for students. When the teacher intentionally builds experiences for students to revisit text for different purposes, students are provided a model that shows how it's appropriate for a proficient reader to return to a text to fulfill a different purpose set by that reader.
Check out these
FREE Shared Reading Tools...
Plan out which Shared Reading texts to use each quarter (or the year) to ensure that students are receiving repeated exposure to different genres and/or text structures.
Use this printable Shared Reading Text Rotation Planner (shown below) as a suggested cycle of the kinds of texts you could use throughout a school year.
Click on the image to the right to grab this Shared Reading Year Planner and BONUS... it comes with a sample shared reading lesson plan.
Until next time...
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