Definition of shared reading
What is Shared Reading?
*Effective reading instruction involves a combination of powerful instructional settings. This post is the next in our "What is...?" series, where we define each instructional context that makes up a coherent literacy system.
What is shared reading?
During shared reading, you and your students read aloud an enlarged version of an engaging text that provides opportunities for your students to expand their reading competencies. The goals of the first reading are to ensure that students enjoy the text and think about the meaning. After the first reading, students take part in multiple, subsequent readings to notice more about the text. They discuss the text, and you select teaching points based on their needs.
Why is shared reading important?
As an instructional context, shared reading:
- Provides enjoyable, successful experiences with print for all students
- Promotes the development of all aspects of the reading process
- Builds language skills and enhances vocabulary
- Provides opportunities to engage in expressive, meaningful, fluent reading
- Builds understanding of various types of texts, formats, and language structures
- Builds a community of readers
"Shared reading enables all children, regardless of their reading levels, to have enjoyable literacy opportunities every day.
" – Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell
What does shared reading look like?
Students sit together as a whole group and, following your first reading, engage in an oral reading of a common text. They use their voices to interpret the meaning of a text as they read in unison with others. Alternatively, students are assigned parts to read.
Structure of a shared reading lesson:
- Introduce the Text – Engage students' interest in the text with a few opening words.
- Model Reading of the Text – Read the text to students at a good pace with a focus on enjoyment and understanding. Have a brief discussion.
- Read the Text Together – Have students read the whole text or selected parts with you.
- Discuss the Text – Guide conversation about the meaning and language of the text, and invite students to share their thinking.
- Teaching Points – Select a specific part or parts of the text to revisit to make teaching points.
This can be accomplished over a number of subsequent readings. - Repeated Readings – Revisit the text again on subsequent days, making additional teaching points and supporting students in gaining independence in processing the text.
Shared reading is an enjoyable experience for your classroom community and an important opportunity for children to “step up together” into more challenging texts while also beginning to notice and acquire the processes they need to read texts independently.
To learn more about the Fountas & Pinnell Classroom™ Shared Reading Collection, click the link below.
~The Fountas & Pinnell Literacy™ Team
Check out the entire "What is?" blog series:
- What is Guided Reading?
- What is Interactive Read-Aloud?
- What is Shared Reading?
- What are Reading Minilessons?
- What is Independent Reading?
- What are Book Clubs?
- What is Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study?
Topics: Fountas & Pinnell Classroom™, Shared Reading, Featured Posts, Home, What is Series
Shared Reading | Classroom Strategies
Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience that occurs when students join in or share the reading of a book or other text while guided and supported by a teacher.
The teacher explicitly models the skills of proficient readers, including reading with fluency and expression. The shared reading model often uses oversized books (referred to as big books) with enlarged print and illustrations.
| When to use: | Before reading | During reading | After reading |
| How to use: | Individually | With small groups | Whole class setting |
More fluency strategies
Why use shared reading?
- It provides struggling readers with necessary support.
- Shared reading of predictable text can build sight word knowledge and reading fluency
- Allows students to enjoy materials that they may not be able to read on their own.
- Ensures that all students feel successful by providing support to the entire group.
How to use shared reading
- Introduce the story by discussing the title, cover, and author/illustrator.
Ask the students to make predictions regarding what they think the story might be about. - Read the story aloud to the students using appropriate inflection and tone. Pause and ask the students to make predictions. Ask brief questions to determine students' comprehension level.
- Conclude the reading by reserving time for reactions and comments. Ask questions about the story and relate the story to the students' similar experiences. Ask the children to retell the story in their own words.
- Re-read the story and/or allow time for independent reading.
- Conduct follow-up activities such as making crafts related to the story.
Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom: Shared Reading in Kindergarten
Give students with an opportunity to practice reading fluency and expression through a shared reading with the class. The teacher asks questions as she reads to help students stay engaged. See the lesson plan.
This video is published with permission from the Balanced Literacy Diet. See many more related how-to videos with lesson plans in the Reading Fluency and Expression section.
Collect resources
Language Arts
This site gives teachers some ideas for using shared reading with younger students and less skilled readers. See example >
Science
This site offers several examples of how activities related to learning about science topics can be centered around the shared reading strategy. Downloads of several different poems are provided. See example >
Social Studies
This site provides five examples of shared reading lessons based upon the book Map It! by Elspeth Leacock. See example >
Shared Reading Booklists
Differentiated instruction
For second language learners, students of varying reading skill, and for younger learners
- Teachers may wish to have Spanish copies of the shared reading books.
- Books can be kept in an area accessible to students for independent and familiar rereading by students.
- Ask students to write their own similar story using the same theme or sentence/language pattern of the book that has been shared.
- Teachers can use sentence strips and have students can retell or build the story by putting the strips in order.
- Have students write their predictions based upon what would happen next if the story were to continue.
Related resources
See the research that supports this strategy
Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (1996). Guided Reading, Good First Teaching for All Children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Children's books to use with this strategy
Weather: Poems for All Seasons
By: Lee Bennett Hopkins
Genre: Poetry
Age Level: 6-9
Reading Level: Independent Reader
Easier to read poems focus on weather and seasons.
The Tree that Time Built: A Celebration of Nature, Science and Imagination
By: Mary Ann Hoberman
Genre: Poetry
Age Level: 6-9
Reading Level: Independent Reader
Clearly organized with lucid introductions to each section as well as for select poems, this handsome anthology includes a range of poems and poets for an evocative, informative, and often inspiring look at science and nature.
Honey I Love and Other Poems
By: Eloise Greenfield, Diane Dillon
Genre: Poetry, Fiction
Age Level: 6-9
Reading Level: Independent Reader
A collection of poetry conveys the joys of a young girl.
Emma's Yucky Brother
By: Jean Little, Jennifer Plecas
Genre: Fiction
Age Level: 6-9
Reading Level: Beginning Reader
Emma is thrilled that her family is adopting a 4-year old boy. She soon learns, though, that being an older sister isn’t what she thought it would be at all. Gradually, Emma and Max start to feel like siblings as each child begins to adapt to their family's new configuration. Expressive, simply drawn illustrations extend the smooth text.
Comments
The value of reading together with children | Consultation:
“Here I have already grown up to summer, I have lived for days - not to count.
Now I know: happiness is snuggling up to mom and reading! «
«Let's read before going to bed! M.
Yasnov
.
"The Importance of reading together with children"
Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the revival of family reading traditions, since the concept of modern education is based on the formation of various teaching and upbringing environments, and understanding the essence of family reading allows us to consider it as a kind of developing environment.
Reading together is a great way to make your child feel loved. Memories of these happy moments remain with us for life.
Why read together?
- Reading together creates its own world - only yours and your child's.
- Children who are read to learn to read on their own earlier.
- Reading with children helps develop their intellect, imagination and vocabulary.
- Family reading forms the emotional and aesthetic perception of the book. Listening, a person experiences a strong influence of the sounding word, which allows you to convey triumph, joy, sadness, sadness, a joke, a mockery.
- Family reading develops abilities that are the basis for the perception of artistic images.
- Adults have the opportunity to observe and control the child's spiritual development.
- Family reading is an effective way to socialize the younger generation
When reading to your child, encourage him to talk, give him the opportunity to participate and show feelings. This will help your child grow emotionally and bring you closer spiritually.
When you read to a child, you let him know that reading is a wonderful homework.
When your children grow up, they will remember how you read to them and will read to your children. Traditions strengthen families, and reading aloud is a wonderful tradition to follow.
Reading aloud more interesting for your baby will help simple techniques:
· Put your finger on the readable lines
· instruct the child to turn pages
· Repeat some words and sentences
· Ask questions
Look at the pictures
Read “Role by Role” with expression, ask the child to imitate the voice and habits of the characters.
Relive the stories you read, write a sequel, dramatize.
Establish a tradition of daily reading aloud. Make reading aloud a regular part of your daily life. Reading as a habit is the best thing you can teach children to do. Allocate special time for reading together.
“… Evening. The family is assembled. Dinner and various household chores behind. Everyone sits in their favorite places. Only one lamp is lit, under which one of the family members reads a book aloud. And everyone listens and then discusses what they hear. - this is how I. Bestuzhev conveys the atmosphere of family reading - Lada.
For every person, big or small, the book evokes a sea of thoughts, questions, desires. And when you discuss a book you just read, you create the conditions for a confidential conversation, good communication between adults and children.
• Try to make bedtime reading a good family tradition, an original obligatory ritual.
• It is good to read fairy tales by burning candles.
Children freeze with delight, unique impressions remain in their hearts for a long time.
• Reading, having become an interesting and favorite pastime for a child, is a good help in pedagogical activity as well. Preparing for evening reading, the child tries not to upset his parents with his behavior. This is reminiscent of children's behavior before a birthday, when a favorite gift is expected.
• Also try this: read something very entertaining for a child, and stop at the most interesting place. Pretend to remember an urgent matter. The child is literally bursting with curiosity, and then he himself picks up a book. This method is suitable not only for children who already know how to read, but also for the smallest - for those who have not yet learned to read. The child will subconsciously understand, waiting for the continuation of reading aloud, how interesting is the process of reading, learning new things.
“Reading together is an exciting process”
The first such book that the three of us mastered on long winter evenings was Stevenson's Treasure Island.
I did not plan these joint readings and, perhaps, I thought that a child who reads independently is a child who does not need to read aloud. But it turned out that reading together is an extremely exciting process, including for me: it resulted in discussions and disputes about the most diverse things, “about shoes, about ships, about wax seals, about kings and cabbages.”
With the advent of the “next generation” of children, I am no longer in a hurry to give up reading aloud – we always spend the last half an hour or an hour before going to bed with a book. While my 5-year-old is not eager to read himself, but even when he does, I think we will still keep our nightly “reading at night” ritual.
Maybe someday, I sometimes think, children will read to me? :) Long winter evenings...
Excerpt one
April 2, 2012
Today, while walking in the park, five-year-old Mitya became interested in dog breeds: what are they called? Why are they so different? And why were they taken out differently? Hooray, a great reason to read something about dogs, I love it myself!
To begin with, I chose Prishvin's Stories about Dogs.
The stories are funny in places, not too long ... We read almost everything in the evening, Mitya did not allow us to stop: “Please, let's go to the next one!”
And even the absence of pictures did not interfere in the least - everything is written in such detail: “Romushka (puppy) was very surprised at this and stood upstairs, lowering his ears over his eyes. For a long time he looked down, turning his head first to one side, then to the other, so that the ear would deviate from the eye and you could look. Mitya was so carried away that he tilts his head to the right and left, and I laugh at him: “Won’t you do a rack?”
April 3, 2012
In the morning, on the way to the kindergarten, Mitya, of course, talked about dogs. “When I am six and a half years old, we will get a hunting dog! Setter or cop."
In the evening, we finished reading a few of the remaining Prishvin stories from the hunting cycle, and on a wave of interest, I took out a collection of stories “Clean Dor” by my beloved Yuri Koval.
Unfortunately, the relationship with Koval did not work out for the older children - it felt like it was too late for me to try to “acquaint” them.
I don't read in a row, so far I try to choose short stories, since there are a lot of them. Mitya listens attentively, and he has many questions: what is dor? What does an ide look like? What kind of "cast iron" put in the oven? For one story - two questions, two or three new words. For a long time there was no such density.
April 7, 2012
For several days in a row we read “adult” poems with Mitya.
While reading, Mitya draws a poem at the same time - this way he “remembers it better”.
Today the rhyme was like this (by Aleksey Shelvakh):
BRIDGE
A cart flies the river up with its wheels,
a horse is dancing on its ears, is this horse an acrobat?
The girl opened her umbrella - an amazing thing,
is this a sailing boat? Instead of a pennant - a heel?
Upside down, upside down!
Or - the skirt fluttered
like a big blue steamer's chimney!
It's amazing, fish swim normally,
lilies grow normally, like balloons.
