Joan Moser
March 6, 2015
#346
Recently Kate DiCamillo, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, spoke about the power of reading aloud to students in our classrooms. Watching this compelling message reminded me again that there isn't one magic bullet for teaching every child to read. 
But Kate reminds us, when she reminisces about being whisked away to the Island of the Blue Dolphins as a second grader, that something magical happens when we read aloud to our students.
Knowing the importance of reading aloud to our students, I am puzzled when I hear teachers claim they don’t have time to read aloud to their children or, more frightening yet, are told that reading aloud to students isn't teaching and should not be part of the daily agenda. What's true is that we can't afford to ignore this powerful teaching opportunity that broadens student understanding of themselves, others, and the world, increases vocabulary, and helps to develop the vital second language that is found only in books.
When we read aloud, we create a model for children of what readers look like, how they make sense of text, and how reading is as important to us as eating and breathing. Hearing text read aloud is all it takes to shift some of our students from being people who can read to people who want and love to read.
Because our students' listening levels are typically two years higher than their reading levels, reading aloud is an important part of increasing their reading levels. Steven L. Layne (2015) says, "When the text selected for read-aloud time has students 'listening up' one or two grade levels, teachers become the medium for exposing those students to more mature vocabulary, more complex literary devices, and more sophisticated sentence structures than they would be finding in the grade-level texts they could navigate on their own" (In Defense of Read-Aloud: Sustaining Best Practice, p. 55). Reading aloud is an important part of accelerating student achievement.
If we want our readers to grow, we must read to them, and we must read to them well. It isn't just a practice with a strong research base, but one that is enjoyable and richly rewarding for both ourselves and our audiences.
Ah yes, the power of a read-aloud!
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