Chapter 9: Examine Shared Reading

I agree that shared reading is a powerful teaching tool for all ages. We use shared reading constantly in my classroom. When we are working on a novel in my classroom, we sometimes do not need an entire set of texts, because we can use what we have and share the books. We also use photocopied chapters of our books for mini lessons on things such as figurative language.

My 5th grade students seem to pay better attention and get more from the reading when we use shared reading. I have used shared reading with whole-class to demonstrate and discuss almost all of the examples on page 133. Just yesterday, my students were having trouble with writing conclusions for their Thanksgiving writings. The students were able to share their endings and we discussed summarizing. I was also able to use another text to share with our class in order to show how to summarize.

In my 5^th grade ELA group, we chose a “challenging” book for our novel study. Shared reading and discussion between students is helpful and improved their reading comprehension during our novel. I love the idea of pairing and sharing and as the chapter discusses in the framework for shared reading on page 134, that when students respond orally as a class after talking in small groups, everyone gets the benefit from hearing each other’s thinking.

The framework for shared reading was also helpful in providing information about the advantages and procedures. I love the way the Chapter gives you a walk through of how to do shared reading with a class.