Hello colleagues, Do you see value in reading aloud to your adult basic education class, or is there just no time for that? If you do read aloud, what do you choose to read? If you don't read aloud, but you would like to, what texts would you choose to read aloud?
What do you see as the pros and cons of reading aloud to adult learners?
Those who are interested, can check out Kasey Short's blog post on the benefits of reading aloud to older learners for 5 minutes in each class. This blog post is about reading aloud to middle school students. How is it different for adults?
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, Teaching & Learning CoP
Comments
Yes! In our class all students read aloud. It is one of the most productive activity to improve decoding, pronunciation, and fluency skills. It also give students confidence to speak with others out of class.
We also encourage our instructors to read aloud to our ESL students, particularly in our reading and writing classes. In my own classroom, I try to vary between having students read out loud, reading silently, and me reading aloud (as well as a variety of other activities such as a jigsaw reading.) I like the idea from the blog about using either novels or picture books. I haven't done this before, but I could see the benefit of taking five to ten minutes each class to read aloud a graphic novel (while displaying the book on a document camera) that deals with some of the issues our students are going through. This would be an interesting way of supplementing our curriculum and could provide lots of jumping off points for grammar, writing and reading activities. One book that comes to mind is American Born Chinese, though I'm sure there are many other options!
Hello, I think that the students prefer that the teacher reads aloud. It helps them to stay connected to the lesson, follow the reading, and know and understand their reading levels or challenges. Reading aloud provides the teacher with a hint into which students may be lagging or not fully understanding the lesson and those who clearly understand the lesson.
Hello Corlis, Thanks for weighing in on this topic. Could you say a bit more about what the teacher can do to get a sense of which students are not fully understanding? What steps could the teacher take in those instances?
Cheers, Susan
Hi, all!
I am with Literacy New York (www.literacynewyork.org), and much of our work is in supporting volunteer tutors across the state. We have long suggested that tutors close out their tutoring sessions by reading aloud to their learners, be they basic education students or English Language learners, from texts that the learners themselves may not have the ability yet to tackle. The thinking behind this is that the tutor is modeling fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary-- showing the learner the beauty of the English language that can be obstructed by struggles with decoding, or lack of robust vocabulary. It also allows for the session to end on a high note, which is valuable as well!