Read alouds are incredibly important for all ages, both inside and outside of the classroom! As Molly Ness stated on page one of Read Alouds for All Learners (2024), “the read aloud is necessary for every student, every day – regardless of age, grade level, or language background”.
Some of the many benefits of read alouds that Ness shared in Read Alouds for All Learners (2024) are stated below:
Over the past three weeks we had an amazing opportunity to do a read-aloud with various classes at Gordon Terrace Elementary. This was a great opportunity for us, and I learned a lot! I did three different read alouds with different picture books. I chose my favourite book and activity to share in this blog post. Below is the completed Read Aloud Planning Template from Read Alouds for All Learners by Molly Ness (2024). This read aloud is based on the book ‘This Moose Belongs to Me’ by Oliver Jeffers.
In a Kindergarten class, I was fortunate enough to read ‘This Moose Belongs to Me’, and do the story grid activity. This activity is linked to the Kindergarten English Language Arts Curriculum in the following areas:
Big Idea: Stories and other texts can be shared through pictures or words.
Content: Story- elements of a story.
Curricular Competency: recognize the structure of a story.
This was such a fun activity to do with the Kindergarten class! All the students were very engaged in both the story and the activity. Some of the students struggled to match with sentences, but with an example on the board (modelled for the class prior to them doing the activity) most of the students were able to complete the whole activity independently. We did not have time to do the re-telling portion of the activity, because another teacher came in to do a lesson. However, while circulating in the class I was able to ask students to identify different parts in the story and have them quickly re-tell me. I was very impressed with their comprehension of the story!
I would like to thank all of the Gordon Terrace staff for allowing us to learn in their classrooms and providing us with such a wonderful opportunity!