Quality Read-Alouds Matter: How You Teach Is Just as Important as What You Teach

Description

The authors show how read-alouds can significantly enrich student vocabulary and comprehension by demonstrating enhancements that will foster student learning and language development. They anchor examples to empirical evidence demonstrating that the content of a read-aloud (i.e., what we teach) as well as the quality of the instruction (i.e., how we teach content during a read-aloud) are important and necessary to enhance student learning. They use authentic scenarios to illustrate the difference between a read-aloud taught with basic instructional fidelity and a read-aloud with basic instructional fidelity that was enhanced with features of instructional quality. Specific steps to action before, during, and after a read-aloud using examples from a first-grade read-aloud science unit are provided.

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