October Must Reads: Shared Reading Ideas!

This year I’ve been trying to include Shared Reading into my daily reading activities.  This summer I read about the importance of Shared Reading in primary classrooms as it offers a daily opportunity for students to see a model reader, participate in reading and have some fun with reading, so I made it a goal to try out this year and so far am loving it!

I always included read alouds into my daily reading activities, but Shared Reading is even better because not only are all the students seeing me as a model reader, but since students participate at certain points (during repeated phrases or chants), they are seeing their peers as model readers too.  I see it work like this- the more capable readers will catch on to the repeated phrases and join in right away while the struggling readers may take till the last repeated phrase to join in, but by then they have heard and seen model readers over and over again throughout the story which will in turn give them more models (all their peers) to follow- amazing idea! One of the most important things to remember with Shared Reading is that students need to be able to see the text so they are actually making those connections between what they are hearing/reading and the text.  This can easily be done if you have a SmartBoard for your whole class to see the stories.  I do this in small groups and have the book right in front of them, but being able to project it is even better!

So far this year, I’ve been using a lot of poetry, mainly from my book: Shout! Little Poems that Roar (by Brod Bagert) for my Shared Reading lessons. I LOVE this book and my little friends do too- the poems are about anything and everything and they love to join in on the silly repeated phrases. Check it out if you are looking for a good book of kid poems!

I’m linking up with the awesome ladies at Collaboration Cuties today for their October Must Read Mentor Texts.  I couldn’t just pick one, so I’m including three books that I’ll be using in October in my Shared Reading lessons- they all have repeated phrases/chants that my students can join in on to read along with me.

Each week, I follow the same format for each day, but just switch out a new poem each week.  I spend only about 5-7 minutes on my Shared Reading time since I only see my friends for 30 mins, but could easily spread this out to 10-15 mins. So far I’ve noticed that my little friends really love joining in and reading together with me- they seem very proud of themselves that they know the repeated phrases.  So, not only are they seeing model readers and participating in reading each day, but they are also building their confidence as readers because they “know” what they are reading.