Three Steps to Successful Read Alouds

hat does the research have to say about read alouds? Plenty, and it’s all good–serotonin-boosting good. Recent scientific studies have shown that listening to a read aloud produces physical changes. Feel-good hormones like oxycontin rise, cortisol, the stress hormone, decreases. As a result, learners’ minds and bodies are literally ready to learn. The science of read alouds is a vital, but often overlooked, piece of the science of reading puzzle.  

Let’s change that. In this blog, I share three steps to supercharging read aloud’s effects.  

Three Simple Steps 

Whether you are a teacher or a parent, it’s great to just take a moment to appreciate what a read aloud is–and does. A read aloud–though I prefer the term interactive read-aloud–is a shared literacy experience engaging children and adults in conversation and engagement around a high-quality text. When we read aloud across various genres, formats, and content areas, we build children’s’ background knowledge and expose them to sophisticated vocabulary—all necessary components in language comprehension.  

To maximize the instructional potential of read alouds, I intentionally focus on the following three steps to plan my read aloud (Ness, 2023); these components are readily applicable to any content area read-aloud, from a picture book in a Kindergarten classroom to a seventh-grade social studies textbook reading: 

• Step one: Evaluate. Prior to reading, evaluate the text for potential comprehension breakdowns and instructional opportunities. Consider the background knowledge that the text assumes the reader brings. If readers need some familiarity with a concept or topic in the text, think through how to intentionally frontload their knowledge to eliminate a potential comprehension stumbling point. Also deliberately examine the text for instructional opportunities within the text—for instance, does the text lend itself to making inferences? 
• Step two: Explain. During reading, incorporate think alouds—the purposeful use of I language to model how you are making meaning from the text (Ness, 2018). Through first-person narrative language, use these think alouds to show how you are making inferences, synthesizing information, generating questions about the text, considering the author’s purpose, and addressing the times that you address comprehension breakdowns. Additionally, explain novel vocabulary words—both the words you choose to provide meaningful instruction on and the words you can simply explain (so as to not hinder comprehension of overall content).  

• Step three: Engage and Extend. This final step occurs after your read aloud, where we engage students in critical inquiry and reflection about the text. They extend opportunities to further students’ critical thinking through literacy-rich extensions and engage students in rich conversations. 

Once we embrace the read aloud as an opportunity to build engagement, vocabulary, content knowledge, comprehension, motivation, and so many other academic skills, we increase students’ development as readers, writers, and thinkers. Explicit planning of the read alouds offer these opportunities every day, in every classroom. 

Watch the latest episode of Literacy Matters: Empowered Conversations with Molly Ness to learn more about the benefits of read alouds.