The Many Uses of Read Alouds

        One of the constant modelling strategies that shows up throughout When Kids Can't Read by Kylene Beers is the teacher read aloud.  The wide possibilities that exist when a teacher reads aloud to his or her students makes it an easy and fun way to model almost any new strategy.
        In the realm of comprehension, it can be valuable for a teacher to model their thinking as they read aloud.  What questions pop up as you read?  What connections are you making, to either yourself, the outside world, or to something else you've read or seen?  How are you making inferences based on the text. These are all things than many students need to see modeled.  Engaging read alouds are also great ways for students to gain background knowledge, which helps in their overall comprehension and knowledge about the world.  At the elementary level, we have started prompting students to take notes during read alouds, and this ensures that students engage in what they are learning about.
       In fluency instruction, it is valuable for students to see models of fluent reading.  The beauty of a read aloud with fluency as a goal is that you can work in echo reading or choral reading.  You can focus on things like intonation, or the way one reads dialogue, or uses punctuation.  One key instructional strategy which I saw regarding fluency instruction is to remind your students to "transfer what they've been doing with oral reading to their silent reading" (219).
        I like to use echo reading when I teach vocabulary in a read aloud.  Often, the most interesting words are also the most fun or the most difficult to pronounce for students.  If you ask them to say a new word, they'll almost always comply.  You can also work on vocabulary instruction during read alouds by simply talking about new words that come up, or by defining them before doing the read aloud.
        Because there are so many great things you can do with a read aloud, it can become a bit tempting to do too much at once.  When Beers says that reading teachers must have a good read aloud program, she's simply stating the importance of pre-reading your read alouds, and pick them for specific purposes.  Just focus on one strategy at a time, and let kids practice the things you've modeled soon after seeing you model it.