Reading Aloud in High School

At the Library I manage, Year 7 & 8 (ages 11-12) come to the Library every two weeks with their English teachers for a Library Lesson. I'm fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to lead these lessons.

The format of the lesson is up to me but I usually ask that the students read silently for 20 minutes while some of their classmates go and find new books to borrow. After this we spend 25 minutes doing a literacy based activity or research assignment.

Lately, I've been ensuring I read aloud to every class that comes in for at least 5 minutes. I also get students to read aloud. This is not something I've always done but I know it's an important thing to do.

There is a lot of research out there to show that reading aloud, even for older students carries many benefits. As students get older, they often only read for school work. This is inevitable and important but they need to know that there are still books out there that will make them laugh, cry or jump out of their seats. Source

In my experience, this method has been very successful with boys who say they "hate reading" and groups that struggle to read.

One way I engage them is with Choose Your Own Adventure stories.

I will start the process by reading the first few pages of the story. When it gets to a point when the character has to choose what to do, I have the class vote.

This always leads to a lot of fun discussion and debate. The great thing is that it's debate about the story. The students are ingesting and analysing the story and working together as a team to get through it.

I then pass the book on to a student who will read a chunk and get the class to vote again. It's a huge amount of fun, easy to do and gets the whole class involved.

Students, especially older ones who struggle with reading can decode books that are read aloud to them in a way that they can't if they attempt to read them by themselves. Source.


It works for even older students, too. I recently read aloud passages from Dashka Slater's The 57 Bus & heard an audible "Whoa" from a boy who never "Whoas" in Library Lessons let alone engages in reading discussions. After reading it he walked away with the book in his hands, it was a great moment for me.

I also use reading aloud through picture books. In the past I have purchased a series of wordless picture books & had student create their own stories to go with the pictures. In this sense, the students would read aloud their own creations. Again, it was a lot of fun watching their stories unfold.

Reading aloud also:
Builds knowledge in content areas
Creates positive attitudes towards reading
Increases reading fluency
Helps develop eloquent and expressive communication skills
Leads to further group discussion

Source

Another way I use picture books is for our Year 7 and 8 students to connect with a class that is much younger, usually 4 or 5 year olds. We usually connect to the class via Skype, our students then read picture books aloud to them.

A third way picture books can be used is for you the teacher or Librarian to read them aloud. Last week I read aloud Nicola Davies' amazing The Day War Came which is an illustrated poem about a girl whose town is destroyed by bombs. She is forced to flee and is told at one point that she can't join her new class because they don't have enough chairs for her. You can read the poem here.

Using the amazing resource Authorfy, I showed the class videos of Nicola reading from the book (after I had read it to them in its entirety) and we did a writing exercise from the web site. It was simple, I had them write about the street they currently live on. I had them describe what it looked like, what it sounded like, what they could smell when they walked down it, anything.

In the next paragraph I had them write what it would look, smell and sound like if it had been completely levelled by bombs. What came out of this was some really amazing short stories from students who normally clam up or try hard not to engage. They read aloud their stories, describing how the smell of fish and chips or grass went to the smell of fire and ash and fear. It was a great exercise and an even better reminder of how fortunate we are to live in a place where this doesn't happen.

In short, reading aloud isn't something I have always done with these age groups in the past but I know it's something I will be doing as much as possible in the future. To these, and hopefully even older groups.