Rebecca Welch: Routman Ch.9 Emphasize Shared Reading

When looking at the chapter menu, this title really stuck out to me because we have begun book clubs. I was intrigued by the ideas that could be in this chapter. I am also not very familiar with how shared reading should work, so I was excited. Shared reading occurs when the readers see a text, observe an expert and then reads along. This works very well with poems and chants but can work with any text. But I think this can really be used in book clubs as well. I did not set my book clubs up totally horizontally. I set some up of my groups vertically so that there can be some peer tutoring. I think students can definitely take some time every during meetings to read together and the higher readers can help the lower readers. They can act as a teacher in this scenario. 

I did notice during the chapter though that shared reading should be "the bulk of my reading demonstrations" (pg. 132). When thinking about my classroom, I rarely do any shared reading, but I read aloud almost every day. I always have a class novel that I am reading aloud that we read every day when we come in from recess. I use this time as not only a calm-down time from recess, but as a time to get our minds back to learning and ready to read. I think I should start using this time to do some shared reading as well. I can even start making copies of some pages so students can follow along and read along. I think this will help their reading dramatically. 

I also realized that shared reading "provides a context for students to talk with one another about a text" (pg. 133). My students are so talkative, so if shared reading (or book clubs) get students talking about something other than popular songs or each other;s hairlines, I will be one happy teacher!

I am excited about the possibilities of shared reading in my room, from book clubs to read aloud time, to anything that we can read together. I think I am going to be implementing shared reading much more in my room.