March is Reading Month, Tip #6: Keep Reading Aloud

Keep reading aloud even once kids are reading to themselves, whether your reader is 6 months, 6 years, 26, or 106.

My favorite read aloud picture... April 2008.  (Dated by Blaine's 826 Michigan Mustache Fundraiser goatee...)

Share something- even with older readers- often. Perhaps it's just an article or a clipping at dinner, reading aloud a favorite poem, sharing an email off your phone, or listen to an audiobook together. Maybe even just read a paragraph from the novel you're reading. Listening and reading are two very different skills and pleasures. Sharing a text is an important connection; it happens at schools, in churches, in homes. Sharing a text links people.Blaine (aka Mr. TRWH) and I once read aloud a Lemony Snicket book to each other at bedtime. It was so much fun. It was hard to read a chapter book (even a children's one) together because I would sneak and read ahead. (I just had to know what would happen to that Baudelaire baby.) "The Talk of the Town" from The New Yorker seems to be more up our alley.

Fran is really into his own reading right now- and we are so strapped for time after school. Once he reads to us (or to himself), he is usually pretty beat from a long day and often asks to go to bed. I'm going to to try to squeeze in a little read aloud time by finding stolen minutes: after breakfast, waiting in the van before school (when we arrive to early to get out and wait in the cold), at the Y before swim lessons, at dinner.

Sometimes I think reading aloud is like exercise: sometimes you really have to plan your day so it is given time. But reading aloud shouldn't stop just because your readers can already read.