Kaylee Foster’s May Blog- Routman (2003), Chapter: Emphasize Shared Reading

We have to ask ourselves the question, do we want to make reading fun for our students? I feel confident our answers across the board would be a uniformed, YES! Shared reading is fun for the students and according to Routman teaching reading will become more fun too. It is a win-win! I am ready to get started now! Routman suggest that shared reading should become a major part of our reading program. Research has even proved that shared reading typically improves reading achievement for the student. One of the great things about shared reading is that it can be used to demonstrate various text from nonfiction, novels, poetry, plays, short stories, etc. Routman even takes it a step further and says we should add shared reading aloud to our classrooms. Share reading aloud can be used to demonstrate and discuss some of the following: fluency, predicting, inferring, making connections, enjoying reading, and much more. Routman states that “in other words, shared reading aloud is a powerful context for demonstrating and practicing all aspects of the reading process in any genre”. It gets even better! It is very quick and time efficient- which is what we all need in our classrooms. This chapter does a great job and breaking down exactly what the teacher can say and do in certain situations while doing a shared read aloud. This chapter would be a great resource to come back to when I have questions, as I begin implementing shared reading in my classroom.