If you’re a teacher who is reading this then the odds are favorable that you’ve done some sort of read aloud in your classroom before. A read aloud is often done to engage students while they simply listen, or maybe they multi-task by drawing, or working on something else, while you read. I love doing a read aloud with my class to simply grow the love of reading but recently, I have found so much benefit in doing a guided read aloud to help my students with their comprehension as well as exposing them to new words that they may not read on their own.

When picking a book for a guided read aloud you can choose a book that is above, the reading level of some, or all, of your students because you are the one who is reading. Students will get exposure to new words while they track the words that you read. I have done this in both fourth and fifth grade classrooms and it has been fun to watch my students get invested into a book that they may not have picked to read, or been able to read, themselves.

To make sure that my students are engaged in the book and actively listening I do these three different things.

• First, I teach my students at the beginning of every school year that whenever I am reading something and they are tracking that if I pause they are responsible for saying the word that comes next. This has always worked wonders in my own classroom and if I start to notice that the overall response has gotten too quiet for the class I will restart that page or paragraph and remind them of the expectation.
• Second, I typically find something that pops up a few times in whatever it is that we are reading for that day and I ask my students to alert me when we come across that thing. For example, one day they may be listening for compound words, or a word that contains a specific prefix of suffix that we have recently learned about. Another great example is to identify different types of figurative language – bonus points if you can do this while also in your narrative writing unit 😉
• The next thing that I do is try and keep things spontaneous and fun. One way that I do this is by passing out headlamps and turning off the classroom lights. My students have always loved this because we don’t do it often but when we do it’s extra special. I also do this with other subjects when I noticed that there is a lull and lack of excitement or engagement with the task that needs to be completed. (Before you start thinking that it is crazy and too expensive I found very cheap headlamps at Walmart and have been using them for 7 years and have just had to replace the batteries so I promise they are well worth it) .