A Valentine's Day Read Aloud <3

mariabecht
Feb 21, 2017
2 min read

For Valentine's day I selected the warm and relatable story called Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts. I selected this book because it has themes of wants vs needs, sacrifice, and friendship in it. In Critical Literacy across the K-6 Curriculum the author states that what teachers attend to, children attend to. I chose to attend to the theme of friendship in this read aloud, as some of my students are struggling in using kind words to each other and being friends. During this read aloud I emphasized the strong ties to friendship and love in the story. I did this so when I see students facing encounters and not being friends, I can refer back to the book and remind them why them we should get along and work towards understanding our classmates. This read aloud also relates to Valentine's day, which my class was celebrating. The goal of this real aloud was to bring love and understanding in the classroom. My students clapped at the end of the story and seemed to enjoyed it. They were also excited to continue doing Valentines day things during the school day.

I had my students say in their seats during the read aloud and made sure I had their attention before starting the story. I walked around the room to make sure all students could hear story and see the pictures. For my ELL students, I pointed out the pictures in the story and was expressive while reading with my voice and face.

During the real aloud, I modeled think alouds. Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum states that "when using think alouds, teachers verbalize their thoughts while they are reading orally. Students will understand comprehension strategies better because they can see how the mind can respond to thinking through trouble spots and constructing meaning from text". I modeled think alouds for my students because many of them are not comprehending while reading. I wanted to show how actively questioning the text can help readers comprehend and make meaning from the text.

Classrooms that Work states that the teacher has knowledge of skills students need to be taught, and teaches these explicitly through modeling. I used modeling in this read aloud to show my students ways to think while reading and to actively question the text. I also made predictions during my read aloud . My students are required to make predictions daily during their independent reading time; however, many of them get lost doing so and give up. I made predictions using stems from a prediction anchor chart that is hung in the classroom. I told the students that I was using the prediction chart while making my predictions during the read aloud. Doing this put me in the shoes of my students and can help them while making predictions because I modeled how to do so. Overall, I designed my instruction for this read aloud so my students could understand see how one thinks while reading and how we should treat others in our lives with love and understanding.