Every day, no matter what else has gone on, I read aloud to my class.
They are fifth graders, growing tall, beginning to mature, just entering the terrible miracle of puberty.
You would think that they’d be too old to have an adult reading them stories, wouldn’t you?
They aren’t.
They love “Read Aloud”. I love it even more. In a time when so much of education is focused on gathering data, on scoring rubrics, on force feeding those Common Core State Standards, it is both a relief and a joy to settle into my chair after lunch, a good book in my hands, the children draped on the rug at my feet.
I love to watch them as I read to them; I love to see them as they react to the action.
Sometimes, when the book is familiar, I can glance at the text and then look out at the kids, knowing the words that are coming next. I can really look at them in those moments, because they do not see me looking. They are seeing the characters in the book, watching the action unfold. They are unaware of the classroom around them, or the teacher who is looking at them tenderly as she reads.
I love to read the words, “She narrowed her eyes”, because I see those beautiful children trying it out, narrowing their own bright eyes. I love to read, “He shook his head”, because so many of them shake theirs.
After lunch on a bright spring day, I love to read aloud to my class. I see the unconscious smiles on the lips of the girls, watching as they twirl a bit of their hair around a finger. I love to read aloud as those quickly growing boys sit, so uncharacteristically quiet, their gleaming eyes unseeing, the sweat in their hair drying, a smudge of dirt on their cheeks. I love to come to a moment of action, hearing their indrawn breath, catching the glances they throw at each other.
Most of all, I love to come to the end of a chapter, hearing them groan and complain as I place my bookmark in the pages that I am closing.
I love “Read Aloud”.
I hope that it is never subjected to a rubric, or lost to a misguided desire to teach them to read “at their own level.”
Empty Nest, Full Life 
Read aloud time is, I think, one of the things I miss about being a parent of a young kid, and absolutely the thing I miss most about being a kid myself. That is love!
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I agree! I am hoping to retire just in time to start reading aloud to my grandchildren! I. Love. It.
But believe it or not, we are under pressure now to stop the “read aloud” in favor of more “mini lessons” on “reading strategies”.
I say NO.
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DO NOT GIVE IN!! EVER!!
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Oh no they have lost the plot. Reading strategies can wait.
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Ah-men!
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I agree! As a Preschool PreK teacher, I read aloud to my kids every day. Even if it doesn’t go well (4 and 5 year olds often have other things they would rather be doing), I still read to them. Last month we doubled our Read Alouds and four of my kids read a first easy reader. And the books I borrow from the library they often ask to take them to table so they can “read” them by themselves.
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What’s ‘reading strategy’ for goodness sake? Reading to kids makes them want to read for themselves. What more can you ask? My 2 y/o grandson now ‘reads’ books to himself with great enthusiasm!
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I love reading aloud. It’s just one of the reasons James (http://zorbear.wordpress.com/about/ ) will always be three-and-a-half years old, forever unable to read for himself…
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I love read aloud moments – both as a reader and a listener. It is something we all can benefit from – babies to the elderly. Keep it up in your class no matter what!
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People of all ages have been gathering round storytellers to listen to magical tales, with or without the aid of books, (all tales are magical) for millenia – it’s fundemental to the human experience and can foster a future love of reading
https://afterwork101.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/the-reading-habit-and-how-i-got-it/
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I used to love that time in school myself, it was so much fun. When my nieces and nephews were younger I used to read to them too.
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I loved being read to at primary school and I used to read to my own sons every day. I consider myself a very hands-off mother but the two pieces of prescriptive advice I have given to my son, a new parent, are : hold your children’s hands near a busy road, and read them a bedtime story every night.
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Lovely advice! I’ll pass it on to my daughter, soon to become a mother herself. I so love reading out loud: I can’t wait to read to my granddaughter!
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Are you a grandma yet Momshieb ?
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Not yet!!! About 5 or 6 more weeks to go. I cannot WAIT.
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All the best! I’ll be meeting my grandson in two weeks time. Counting the days …
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Wonderful!!!!!
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“terrible miracle of puberty” — brilliant, perfect
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Why thank you!
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