Ten Tips for Reading Aloud to Your Children

Bedtime Stories:  Make Read-Aloud FUN!

It's been a while since I shared any reading tips with all of you, and didn't I mention it was Family Literacy Month here in Massachusetts?  My district held a Literacy Information Night for families last night, where I was meant to present some information to parents about the importance of phonemic awareness and phonics, but I was too busy with pneumonia.  I must say, I feel a lot better today and I'm looking forward to returning to work on Friday morning!

Since we all know how important it is to read with your children every day, I thought I would share some read-aloud tips that you can put into practice.  Here goes:

• Look at the front cover together and talk about things you notice.  Who are the characters going to be?  What do you think is going to happen?
• Pretend your putting on a show when you read.  Make it fun for them to listen to you.    
• Dramatize emphasized words.
• Make different sounds and tones for different characters.
• Use facial expressions and change your tone for different characters and emotions.
• Read slowly and clearly with lots of animation.
• Read in a a quiet spot with the least amount of distractions.
• Stop and talk about happenings as you move through the book.  Were any predictions correct?  Any new predictions?
• Ask questions here and there to see if they're paying attention and comprehending.
• It's always fun to leave out words and phrases from familiar stories that you love to share together to see if they can fill in the missing parts.  They love chiming in and "reading" with you, even if it's memorization.  This really helps them follow along and comprehend.  And sometimes, they may have the wrong word or phrase, but if they choose one that makes sense in the story, they are doing amazing stuff with syntax, vocabulary and learning how language works.  

Now get to it, go read a book together!