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Reading aloud in class - hide from it or make it your culture?

Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2015 11:07 am
by Debbie_Hepplewhite
Reading aloud in class could be one of those activities that teachers hide away from for fear of over-challenging readers who are less secure at reading in front of people - perhaps for a variety of reasons (consider what they might be).

Reading aloud, however, is really important for a number of reasons and could be an extremely positive experience for pupils of all ages - but this depends, again, on various issues.

Rather than go on to outline any 'issues', I'll leave you to read this very good blog posting about reading aloud in class (perhaps it will provide food for thought) - and please note the surprise the teacher felt with the very positive response of her pupils to class reading-aloud. This raises questions, doesn't it, about our pre-conceived notions of pupils' responses!!!!!

https://readingallthebooksuk.wordpress. ... ead-tlt15/
How to Read: TLT15

Posted on October 29, 2015

On 17th October, I travelled to Southampton for my second year presenting at TLT. I was talking about reading (not much new there), and, specifically, how to read. Reading, of course, is at the core of what we do as teachers; and not just as teachers of English. More and more in my new role, I’m coming to see that reading may be the only silver bullet in education: beautiful in its simplicity, obvious in its impact.

The reality is that our strongest readers read the most, and our weakest readers the least: the exact opposite what we need to see to close the gap between our best and worst performing students. This is not only true in their home lives, but also in our classrooms. Anyone who has ever asked for volunteers to read (including: me; guilty as charged) is advantaging those strong readers, and further denying reading from the weakest.
Please do contribute any thoughts or experiences you have for the topic of 'reading aloud' in class. :)