The part of book club that I like the most and that I have seen since day one in my classroom is read aloud. We do read aloud every day after lunch time for about 20 minutes. I started taking over read aloud within the first week of school because it was an easy way for me to get in front of the students and a good way for me to be incorporated into the classroom right off the bat. This is a time for the students to come back after recess/lunch and relax a little bit and calm down. The students are expected to act appropriately during read aloud which means they sit criss-cross on the carpet. They should be listening to whoever is talking whether it is my CT, me, or another student. This time is not a time for them to be lying around and acting silly. Sometimes I will read a silly book to them and let them interact with me or the book, for example they really like the “No, David” books by David Shannon.
For me the hardest part of read aloud is making meaning. At first I would just read the class a book but then I started involving them more and “thinking out loud” when I read. I would say things like “hm, I wonder what’s going to happen next…”.That was hard for me at first but now we are reading some more factual book during this time and it is important that I connect the books to “their world”. In my classroom we are tying a lot of the social studies pieces into the read alouds. Right now we are talking about bullies and respect. I read them a book called “King of the Playground” which is about a boy that gets bullied on the playground and his dad gives him advice on how to deal with it and by the end of the book the main character and the bully are friends. When I finished reading the book I asked a few students to share what they thought happened in the book and what the main point of the book was. I also pointed out that the main character did not say mean things back to the bully; he simply walked away from the situation which is what they should do if they are confronted with a bully. Some classrooms treat read aloud as a free time or as a time to unwind but I think it is important to try to connect all the reading to the children in some way.
I agree with you about how incorporating more into read alouds is really useful in the classroom. I have found that in some books if you can turn it into a mystery or some type of guessing game the students will respond really well to it. It gets them engaged in the book and I have found that students who might have been distracted before are actually interested in what I am reading because they get to participate somehow, even if it is finding a picture on a page, or guessing an answer.
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