Shared Reading (SR) ~ Procedures

In the lessons presented in the Hidden Villa curriculum, the literacy strategy of Shared Reading is used to read key informational texts together as a class. The particular focus for the SR sessions in this curriculum is to:

1. Support students in learning basic comprehension strategies for informational texts.
2. Introduce new content to the class.
3. Preview and reinforce important content vocabulary.

Day #1:

• Using the title and any graphics in your shared reading, encourage your students to make predictions about what the text is going to be about.
• Read the text through with your class. Your voice should be the loudest as you are the model of a fluent reader.
• At the end of each paragraph, stop and review any workds that were difficult for your students to pronounce. For particularly difficult words, it can be surprisingly helpful to practice the word backwards - starting with the last syllable and and working, syllable by syllable back to the whole word.
• Think-Pair-Share: Students talk about their first impressions of the text.

Day #2

• Think-Pair-Share: Students remember what the shared reading text is about.
• Review the pronunciation of some of the words your class practiced the previous day.
• Re-read the first half of the text. Student fluency should begin to improve.
• After each paragraph, stop to review challenging vocabulary words. Ask your students, "What are some words you don't know or would just like to understand better?"
• Highlight these words on your shared reading text. Then guide your students in strategies they can use to discover their meaning. Encourage your students to look at affixes and root words. In bilingual classes I have found it useful to demonstrate how their knowledge of Spanish can help in deciphering many difficult words in English.
• Write your students' vocabulary words on a separate piece of chart paper and have them think of a simple drawing or description to help them remember the definition of each word.

Day #3:

• Follow the exact same steps as in Day #2 while re-reading the second half of the text.

Day #4 (possibly into Day #5)

• Review all the vocabularly words your students have learned.
• Before reading, tell your students that today they are going to be thinking about bigger questions about the text. This could be ideas that they still don't understand or questions the text makes them wonder about.
• Re-read the entire text together as a class. After each paragraph, pause very briefly (to catch your breath and model thoughtful reading) so that students can quickly share with their partners one question that thie paragraph brought to mind. Ask them to remember this question for the class discussion that will come at the end of the lesson.
• When you have finished reading, ask your students how the meaning of the text changed, now that they understand more of the vocabularly words.
• Direct a discussion about your student's bigger questions regarding the text. (This could possibly extend into a second day of discussion.)
• Think-Pair-Share: Students think together about the most important information or main ideas of the text. Ask them to justify their answers, e.g. Why do you think that piece of information is so important to understanding the main topic?
• Guide students in coming up with a quick and short summary of the main ideas of the text. You may want to jot this down next to the Shared Reading so that students can refer to it later on.