Before,+During,+and+After+Reading

Before, During, and After Reading Initiated By: Lauren Blanton

====“Children deserve opportunities to interact with the richest language, most beautiful art and enticing storylines that we can offer” (Hoyt, 2009, Overview). Before an interactive read aloud begins, teachers should select a text that is going to give children a chance to expand their oral language and challenge them to think deeper and answer higher order thinking questions. There are steps involved in preparing for an interactive read-aloud. The teacher should read the book several times for themselves, aim to meet student needs, identify key places where students will have the opportunity to share, anticipate where students might need prior knowledge built, and decide how questions will be worded and how students may respond to those questions (Barrentine, 1996, p. 41-42). The person reading should also consider modeling for fluency, questioning for deeper thinking, stimulating active listening, and expressing language development as areas of need before choosing a text to read to students. The teacher should be aware of the overall lesson that the book will depict once read.====

====Throughout an interactive read-aloud students will have multiple opportunities to actively participate in the text through questioning. Students will be able to answer questions the teacher is asking, think-pair-share, partner talk, and/or actively participate in the book being read. During reading, chances are given for the student to make a connection either through their own personal experiences, from previous books they have read, or from a worldly interaction they might have had. “During interactive read alouds, teachers pose questions through-out the reading that enhance meaning construction and also show how one makes sense of text” (Barrentine 1996, p. 36). Throughout the interactive read-aloud process, teachers can help students make sense of text through modeling. They can show students how to track print, read with expression, and model comprehension and decoding strategies as they read. They can also give students an intended opportunity to hear vocabulary words that students may not be exposed to in their daily lives. For best learning through interactive read-alouds, children need to be engaged in the learning process. They should be actively participating in the book so they may feel that they are characters “in” the book. Through this interaction students will become better readers, problem solvers, and conversationalists. During interactive read-alouds, teachers should provide a level of comfort and engagement for the students by opening up the conversation, having ongoing conversation, balancing talk and text, and having appealing strategy demonstrations. While reading, the teacher may have to tweak her responses and questions to the direction the conversation takes while discussing the read-aloud.====

====After the interactive read-aloud is complete, there are several things the teacher can do to make sure the students get the best interaction with that text and that they can continue to discover ways to interact with other texts. When the story is complete, the children can have more opportunities to share stories and explore their own feelings about the text. The children can also make connections from the story that was just interactively read to them to future readings and writings. Through interactive read-alouds students have multiple opportunities to explore language, see clear examples of strategies, and enjoy hearing and telling stories.====

References