Read aloud is one of the main literacy focuses in my classroom. Either I or my mentor teacher reads aloud, while the students keep track of their thinking in their thinking notebooks. During the read aloud, my teacher will stop and have the students turn to their partner and share their thinking. My mentor teacher is trying to get our students more comfortable with sharing their thinking on books with others. She is slowly prepping them for book clubs, which she said will be implemented later in the year. We also have implemented the fishbowl style of discussion once, however, like our reading points out, it’s very important to model and practice. Our students had a tough time during the fishbowl, and we realize there is a lot of practicing that needs to happen in order to have a successful fishbowl. I might try to implement a fishbowl in my unit plan; however, I realize how important it is to model and set up guidelines.
During our read alouds, my mentor teacher shares some of her thinking so that our students will understand what thoughtful thinking looks like. According to our reading, think aloud can provide the students with the opportunity to see good thinking, connections, and inferences. This is very evident in the read aloud in our classroom. The students are working on making connections and inferences to enhance their thinking. When talking to my teacher about her selection of literature for the read aloud, she said that she knew she had to pick something that the students would enjoy. The book we are reading is called, “Midnight for Charlie Bone.” The book has really grabbed the attention of all of our students, and they are thoroughly engaged with the text. Our reading in “Book Club Plus” suggests that it is crucial to pick a book with relevant themes that will provide students with a lot to talk about. The book my mentor teacher has selected provides the students with a variety of relevant themes such as friendship and overcoming adversity, and the students are really enjoying it. I totally understand why it’s so important to pick an engaging text for read aloud. In order for a successful read aloud that fosters students thinking deeply about the text, they need to find the reading interesting and enjoyable. I think we have accomplished this in our class!
The students in our class are still working toward having book clubs in our classroom, and my mentor teacher says that next semester we most likely will start book clubs where the students are grouped and will be discussing their thinking as a group. Talking with my mentor teacher, she realizes how important it is to take steps toward book clubs rather then just throwing the whole concept at them at once. Right now our students are practicing jotting their thinking and sharing their thinking with other students. By modeling, we show our students how to make inferences and predictions with the texts we read. Our students are making great progress and using read aloud has been very successful so far in our classroom!
I completely agree with the choice of text. We finished our first read aloud last weekish. We read Sarah Plain and Tall. Now we are on to Hatchet. The students have really enjoyed both thus far. Today, I saw students actually turn to their partner and use the exact same phrases my CT uses in her think alouds. It was really great to see the students use what they have seen in addition to what they already know about texts.
ReplyDeleteI have been leading themed read alouds and even with short picture books I can tell when the class isn't as involved with the text. I read "Rainbow Fish" and "One Green Apple" and "The Giving Tree" and I was surprised to see that my students were not very interested in "The Giving Tree". Because of their lack of interest our discussion afterward was missing something.