Revisiting Read-Aloud: Instructional Strategies that Encourage Students’ Engagement with Text

Revisiting Read-Aloud: Instructional Strategies that Encourage Students’ Engagement with Text by Morrison and Wlodarczyk (2010)

The very first line states, “This article describes evidence-based practices that encourage first graders’ engagement with texts.”  I was hooked from the phrase, “evidence-based practices”, because I continually look for practices that have been proven to work!  The authors describe many factors that impact the ability to get students engaged in text, including motivation, content knowledge, literacy strategies, and social collaboration.  These factors are immersed in each of the three highlighted strategies. 

Alphaboxes strategy is a graphic organizer with boxes that are labeled with letters of the alphabet. It can be used as a pre and a post reading activity.  Students can note questions, concepts, connections, and explanations in the boxes. This strategy encourages students to work collaboratively with texts. 

Making Connections strategy uses schema, the stored body of knowledge in memory, to make connections and construct meaning.  Using this strategy, readers actively construct new ideas and concepts based on what they already know.  The three types of connections are text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world. 

The Discussion Web strategy promotes collaborative sharing of ideas, alternative perspectives, and problem solving during learning.  Through discussion, students can revisit, question, and clarify text.  This strategy allows students the opportunity to explore various perspectives.  Students come up with their own ideas based on what they’ve read and experienced.  They then share it with a partner to refine and discuss.  Each team then finds another set of partners to share and discuss ideas with before sharing with the class.  After a read aloud, the teacher presents an open-ended question for students to begin their discussion. 

These strategies are designed to increase student engagement with text, student collaboration with each other, and enhance critical thinking skills.  The examples given for each of the three strategies help to clarify the necessary components and bring it to life.  It is important for teachers to have a toolbox of effective strategies.  These three are worthy of being included.