The Power of Reading Aloud

In this article in The Reading Teacher, Illinois teacher JeanaLe Ann Marshall describes how her fourth graders react when she wraps up her daily 10-minute readaloud: “Nooooo! Read more! Don’t stop! Why do you always do this to us?” Among their favorite books:

• Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis (2013)
• The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate (2012)
• A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park (2011)

“I’m confident that my students know the power of a story,” says Marshall. “They’ve listened all year long. They know the feeling of getting hooked, and they realize that within the pages of each book lies a lesson – one that someday just might change them or, even better, cause them to create change in the world.”

Reading well-chosen books aloud has also spurred independent reading. “Little by little, they search for books without my guidance,” says Marshall. “They become ready to orchestrate their own journeys. They take the helm. Now it’s up to them whether or not to read one more chapter or softly let the pages fall closed.”

“When Whining Is Wanted” by JeanaLe Ann Marshall in The Reading Teacher, February 2015 (Vol. 68, # 5, p. 393), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/trtr.1306/epdf

From the Marshall Memo #577