Maximizing Your Read Alouds

Reading aloud with your child is a special time for the both of you. Simply asking you child small questions about what is happening in the book, having discussions of word meanings, making predictions and inferences together, and relating to the book on a personal level, can help your child’s comprehension skills and awaken their imaginations. These small discussions with your child can be very beneficial. Below I will list some of the other more researched methods that can be used during a read-aloud experience with your child. 

Physical Engagement with Books 

Make read-aloud sessions positive and children feel open to reference and point to words and pictures as a parent or love one reads to them

Elaborating

Help children make connection between the read-aloud story and their own life

Questioning 

Parents ask children open-ended questions about read-aloud stories but children also ask questions to their parents about the story.

Print Referencing

Parents point out important information or features of the text such as titles, captions, vocabulary and more.  

Dialogic Reading 

Dialogic Reading involves asking children questions during reading. Below is a chart that can be used to help you come up with questions to ask your child during reading!

Prompt Type	Example
Completion	When the little pig wouldn’t open the door, the wolf said… The last little pig’s house wouldn’t blow down because…
Recall	What did the wolf say? What as the first little pig’s house made of?
Open Ended	Why wouldn’t the little pig open the door for the wolf? What was the real reason the would wanted the pig to open the door?
Distancing	Has a stranger ever come knocking on your door? What kind of house would you like to build when you grow up?

Text Talk

Text Talk is a read aloud strategy that focuses on vocabulary development. Books can be a great context for teaching children new words.   

1) Read and discuss the story with your child-ask them questions that focus on understanding what the story was about. 

2) Then introduce 3 new vocabulary words from the story

3) Ask your child to repeat each word

4) Give them a child friendly definition of the word

5) Ask your child to come with with a sentence using the new vocabulary word

6) Have your child repeat the word again