Read alouds are those magical times in class where you can share your love of reading, come together as a group to listen to and discuss a shared text, and model good reading strategies, such as reading with fluency and expression, stopping to think, making connections, making predictions…the list goes on and on. Creating a shared experience like this is much more challenging when your students are quarantined at home and you only have a computer screen with which to interact with them.
For those of you who’ve been following along with me this month, you know that we closed our school last Tuesday due to Coronavirus, are all in self-quarantine for two weeks (today’s day 6), and have been teaching virtually since Wednesday. It’s been a steep learning curve for all of us, but we are doing our best to engage our students in learning.
On Friday I posted a video of me reading from our read aloud Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech that we started before the closure. I read with as much expression as I could muster, stopped to think about tricky vocabulary, and made connections to what had happened earlier in the book. At the end of the read aloud, I asked students to make some predictions and post them as a comment underneath the video post on Seesaw. I was so excited to read their comments and see their thoughts about the chapter. They were so engaged! 🙂
Here are their comments on the read aloud:
When I recorded the video for Chapter 10, I started by discussing their predictions and sharing my excitement over their engagement with the story. I hope that their enthusiasm continues as we begin week two of virtual school tomorrow.
In case you’re interested, here’s my video of Chapter 10…
my heart is happiest when i travel. read. write. connect. 
You’re doing a great job of keeping your students engaged through your read aloud and the back-and-forth questions and comments on SeeSaw.
This is my favorite book to read with intermediate students! I was also really excited by their predictions. I’m also so impressed with how you’re all carrying on.
How fun is that, sounds like you’ve got your students fully engaged!
It seems that a virtual read aloud is as magical as an in-person read aloud. (I wonder how you feel, reading without an audience.) The back and forth dialogue between the students and you is great!
I will admit that it was weird at first talking to a screen. I miss the live interaction with them! Thanks…trying to make it as genuine as possible.
Keeping the kids enthusiastic and engaged is hard, but in addition to maintaining their education continuously, you are giving them a raft of normality to hang onto in possibly confusing and scary times. It is very difficult, as an adult, to imagine how I would handle a self-quarantine without going bonkers, and I cannot even imagine how to do it with a child at home. Keep up your awesome work!
I hadn’t thought about that, but you’re right…this is something normal about our daily routine. The plan is to post a chapter each day for them. 🙂 I can’t imagine how the parents are coping either…especially if they have multiple kids!
This was my favorite book from fifth grade until high school! How awesome to see that they were still very excited for read aloud!
Really? I had never heard of it until about 10 years ago when a fellow teacher recommended it. It’s my first time reading it aloud to kids. 🙂
This is amazing. I wonder how many of us will also be needing to do virtual classrooms soon! Thanks for modeling!
It’s definitely becoming the norm. Hopefully you won’t have to do it.
This book is great and i love hearing you read. it so reminds me of when you read to the kids when you are home for holiday. Love you
Thanks Mom! Love you!