“Oh, man, you missed the best part yesterday!”
“I couldn’t believe I never saw that happening.”
“My prediction was all wrong, and I totally had to revise it.”
Read-aloud is a sacred part of our day in fifth grade. Students enter the room after lunch eager to hear and discuss the next chapter. They grab their read-aloud notebooks, and conversations similar to the ones above begin immediately about what happened the previous day, especially if a student was absent.
As teachers, we are constantly searching for more time in our day. I’m always looking for a way to save time, and that is when I realized that read-alouds are the perfect opportunity for powerful instruction.
Choosing the Read-Aloud
Oh, the dilemma of making the final choice of a read-aloud. I always have a list a mile long. Several titles are oldies but goodies that I just want to share because I love the story or past classes voted it Number 1 for the year. I always want to read the possible Newbery winner aloud to my class before it is announced. How exciting would it be if our class shared the winner before the announcement in January? I sometimes allow my students to choose the read-aloud. I do several book talks, and after a class vote, we have our winner.
All of these strategies are important, and I could defend them to any colleague. However, I shifted my thinking this year in choosing read-alouds. I chose read-alouds that would give me the biggest bang for my instructional buck. These choices could incorporate several required indicators and, as important, would grab their attention for an enjoyable story. I created an overview spreadsheet encompassing the following indicators from our district curriculum guide. Here is an excerpt from the spreadsheet of standards I considered when picking a read-aloud:
|
What is the focus of reading workshop? |
What is the focus of writing workshop? |
What is the focus of word study? |
What is the science focus? |
|
RL.5.1. Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
RL.5.2. Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text. |
W.5.3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
|
L.5.1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. a. Explain the function of conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections in sentences. |
Organisms perform a variety of roles in an ecosystem. Populations of organisms can be categorized by how they acquire energy. |
I was now ready to choose our next read-aloud: Hide and Seek by Kate Messner.
Presentation of the Read-Aloud
I had three options for how to present the read-aloud.
Option 1: Download the story on my Kindle and project it.
Option 2: Choose to read from the actual book under the document camera.
Option 3: Tell my students ahead of time what book we’re going to read and allow them time to get their own copy.
For Hide and Seek I chose the second option, because I could read from the book and use the document camera when needed. Because it is a mystery, I told students that if they wanted their own copy, to not read ahead and spoil the surprises to come.
For the first day of read
Connecting the Read-Aloud and Standards
As I start reading, I record my thinking on paper and the students write their ideas in their notebooks. We constantly stop to jot ideas, and rich conversations start focusing on using the text to quote accurately about the characters, setting, and plot. This work supports these standards:
RL.5.1. Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
RL.5.2. Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
Through the reading minilessons, students learn to determine a theme applying to these focus areas. The overlap from read-aloud to the reading workshop time is compelling. Students constantly refer to the story and choose to go back to their own notebooks to quote accurately. There is power in allowing students to be in charge of their own quoting accurately using their writing, and it fulfills this standard:
W.5.3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
A major shift in my instruction happened with using our read-aloud as our anchor text in writing workshop. Often I would ask the students questions such as these:
“How did Kate Messner develop the suspense in the cave?”
“What were the steps that led up to that significant event? “
“Can we go back into the text to see the techniques she used to develop the story?”
We then create anchor charts to help guide their own writing or I use the document camera to show them examples that I’ve planned for that day’s lesson.
I’ve noticed a big shift in my students’ writing. Not only has their writing improved, but the quality of conversations has as well.
Students naturally begin to apply the techniques they are hearing in the read-aloud to their drafts in writing workshop.
Word study planning is a piece of cake. As I introduce conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections to the students, they become detectives and search for them in the story. At this point, I use the document camera, and I am stopped in almost every sentence. We have finally come up with a secret symbol, which is silent so I can continue reading. We are tackling this standard in exploring language during the read-aloud:
L.5.1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. Explain the function of conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections in sentences.
In the past I would pass out a list of parts of speech. Now I allow my students to gather their own from the read-aloud.
Although I’m not my students’ science teacher, I am able to support my colleague with choosing this book to support this standard:
Life Science: Organisms perform a variety of roles in an ecosystem. Populations of organisms can be categorized by how they acquire energy.
I am not as familiar with what they have been learning in science; however, that works out to be magical, because they become the teachers for me. With conversations about the plants, animals, and weather in the jungle, they are able to make several connections between content areas. Technology is crucial for this part, because there are several words that we do not understand or have a visual of as we are reading. We have a Google expert who looks up the words, and then we share and learn together. Examples include conquistadors, Costa Rica, green macaw, primary forest, and indigenous.
My biggest concern is that I don’t want to kill the pleasure of read-aloud time—after all, my ultimate goal is to have my class enjoy the story. In choosing the perfect read-aloud, I am able to share an amazing story that hooks my students and allows us to explore many standards at the same time.
