_By Jacob Davis
CSMS Magazine
Our little language learners, especially those who constantly struggle with the texts, need to be exposed to this reading strategy called Shared Reading. It is a strategy that teachers use to read books, charts, and other texts with students when the text is too difficult for students to read independently. Students and teacher read the text aloud together. Even when the students cannot read along with teacher, they hear the words pronounced as their eyes follow the text. In the primary grades, large books with big print—big books—are used with small groups of students so that everyone can see the illustrations and text. Shared reading can also be done with multiple copies of small books, poetry charts, song lyrics, or any text for that matter, as long as students and teacher can all see the words.
Using shared reading with English learners is appropriate because the teacher has opportunities to use illustrations to support vocabulary development, to use think-aloud strategies to teach problem-solving approaches, and to integrate verbal interactions to support comprehension. When using shared reading with English language learners, it is especially important to build background knowledge and experiences that help students understand the meaning of the text. The skills and strategies that can be taught through shared reading. Also, interactive read-aloud and shared reading can be used together to support students as they move into shared reading of texts.
Note: Jacob Davis is our new contributor to CSMS Magazine. He reports on education issues. He also does book reviews for the magazine. He may be reached at bookreview@csmsmagazine.org
