Michelle Lanford- April Post- chapter 9- Routman

I chose to blog about this chapter because it is about shared reading and this is something that I have just started doing with my class this year. I taught preschool, kindergarten, and first grade earlier in my teaching career and I used shared reading a lot with these grades mainly because most of them can't read yet and are just learning how reading works. I had not thought about doing this with my 2nd graders. I have always had a read-aloud time, but not a real shared reading time until now. I enjoy this time when the students and I can share a story or a passage together. I either put a copy on the board or students have their own copy of the text. I feel like more students participate because we are all reading together and they feel less pressure. Routman states that shared reading not only makes the reading visible, it provides scaffolding which helps students feel more successful.  It also gives me another small window of time to teach reading skills. We use the text to discuss reading strategies, text features, elements of fiction, decoding, fluency, etc. depending on the text being used. Students get a chance to talk about the text and discuss it with one another and sometimes do a response activity. I am really glad that I implemented shared reading back into my teaching.