Yesterday, in part 1 of this three-part series on read aloud as RTI intervention, we wrote about Joanne Hindley’s father’s experience learning to read. We described the way his grandmother abandoned the prescribed regimen of basal stories for “pocket westerns.” Considering that read aloud about gunslingers in cowboy books saved Joanne’s father’s reading, not Dick and Jane and the traditional practices of students laboring over prescribed texts (not that such labor and such texts aren’t sometimes necessary), we wondered why read aloud isn’t considered an essential intervention strategy, or at least a valid one.
In Mama Makes Up Her Mind, Bailey White, retired first-grade teacher and NPR commentator, includes a piece about teaching children to read entitled “Maritime Disasters.” She talks about all the ways she tried to teach children to read over her many years of teaching first grade. After experimenting with instructional strategies ranging from prescriptive to cute, from decodable to complex, White learned that the challenge of teaching children to read rests primarily in getting them excited about the ideas behind the words. “Maritime Disasters” describes her discovery that with a “man overboard” or a “good sinking ship,” she could teach a half-witted gorilla to read. She writes, “Little boys who couldn’t pass the draw-a-man test in September are now turning out recognizable portraits of Captain Smith and Robert Ballard in eight colors with their blunt-tipped first-grade crayons … and I haven’t had a cute idea in years. (p. 167).
White discovered that showing children the ways words can move, shock, or entertain them made her job easier and more joyful. She explains, “When children get the idea that written words can tell them something absolutely horrible, half the battle of teaching is won” (p. 166).
We know that teachers appreciate the value of read aloud, although it may still be seen as the icing on the cake. We are concerned that if students are struggling, if classrooms are pressed to get ready for looming standardized tests, or if the CCSS are seen as discrete content rather than process focused (which they are), then read aloud will get pushed farther and farther away. It seems to us that teachers are finding less and less opportunity to read aloud and they seem less and less connected to children’s literature (Might this be a chicken-and-egg kind of problem? Hmmm….).
But we think that classroom connections to great books, particularly through read aloud, may actually be the instructional piece that gives students the inspiration and motivation to learn to read well. Education seems locked in a vicious downward spiral, i.e. students struggle = they get more prescribed text and less read aloud = they are uninvested in the reading because they don’t care about the characters or the text = they have decreased energy, motivation, and agency for learning to read = they become less skilled or stuck = we panic = they get more prescribed text and less read aloud … and on and on.
So, reading aloud is essential (not icing on the cake) to learning to read because it communicates the power of words and gives children a vision of their rich futures as readers. How do you use read aloud with your students who struggle the most? We are dying to know. We are aching for good news about the ways you are staying connected to great books and teaching students about the power of words.