Stapled Read-Aloud

Cunningham, P. & Allington, R. (2007). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Fletcher, R. & Portalupi, J. (2001). Writing workshop: The essential guide. Portsmouth: Heinemann.


One of the most frequent complaints I received from students last year (but usually only two or three of them) went something like this:

"Mr. Ballinger?"
"Yes?"
"This is Language Arts, right?"
"Last time I checked, anyway."
"Why do you read to us every day?"
"What do you mean?"
"When are we gonna do stuff like nouns and adjectives and...and...verbs and stuff, you know?"
"But we already are! You've been using grammar in the writing you create. Why do we need to use it in isolation if we can use it for the big picture? When I read to you I show you the voice of another writer, in the same community in which you partake, so that you too can someday publish your work."
"Oh...okay, whatever."

(I got similar complaints in Literature about structuring too much time writing!)

I couldn't agree more with Cunningham and Allington when they say teacher read-aloud has been shown to be one of the prime motivators for children's desire to read (p. 13). I made a concerted effort to carve out at least 5-10 minutes each class period to read to my students. With Language Arts, I read The View from Saturday by E. L. Kronigsburg, Who Moved my Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, Howliday Inn by James Howe and passages from Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. With Literature, I read the first two books in Margaret Haddix's shadow children series: Among the Hidden & Among the Imposters (we never did get to complete the last one; I had a substitute that day and he never got around to it). I also read The Haunting by Shirley Jackson.

The authors make a sound point when they suggest that while read-aloud is much more prevalent among younger children (in the primary grades), it might actually be more important for older children (3rd-8th grade). The reason is simple: as we discussed yesterday, the older children get, the more that attitude becomes a factor in their work. At this time, they need all the motivation to perform to as high a level as possible for them. So when they hear the teacher reading books aloud to them, they have a deeper wealth of knowledge from which they can draw for their own reading or writing in class (and at home).

It's even better when we can let children choose the novels they want read during the class (p. 15). The View from Saturday and The Haunting were not my selections. I merely gave students a short list of titles, and they picked out the books on their own. It's important to note that all they had to go on was the title and the cover of the book; none of them knew in advance plot details. I suspect The Haunting made them think they were in for a science fiction thriller or some kind of horror story with ghosts, witches, etc. I don't recall what made them choose The View, honestly.

I fear that I started out the year with the big picture in mind about checking up on students' reading (p. 20), but I didn't really maintain it. It's pretty easy to fall into the trap of focusing too much on the curriculum you feel compelled to complete, but you can easily lose sight of the big picture - helping children become better readers. As with the writing workshop, scheduling time to conference with both the teacher and other classmates (p. 23) is important in not only improving skills with reading, but raising the level of motivation to read.

Fletcher and Portapuli raise similar concerns in ch. 7 of Writing Workshop, thereby strengthening my view that reading and writing are inseparably linked (despite what the middle school curriculum tells us). In Language Arts, I often tried to make use of the daily reading time to either introduce a grammar concept, an element of good writing, or simply to gain their attention (p. 79). I used Howliday Inn to help them take note of dialogue and following the subtle plot details that are appropriate in a mystery book. I used Among the Hidden to show how the author crafts characters in ways that enable the reader to identify with them, as when they wrote letters to the main character, Luke, to tell him they know he is a shadow child and offer him some strategies for coping with his situation. Each time, I made use of some element from our reading for a writing application, thereby letting them know the daily reading time is valuable because it's part of how they're growing as readers and writers.