It is World Read Aloud Day. Here’s our Top 6 tips for reading aloud:
1. Read the book beforehand to familiarise yourself with the story. Make notes of places you want to stop and ask questions.
2. Be animated! Change your voice during the read to match the expressions of the characters and emotions of the story, this will truly bring the text to life.
3. Use different voices for different characters so that children come to recognise dialogue within a text and individual character traits.
4. If your book has a lot of text, try a story walk instead of reading every word. A story walk is when you summarise what is happening on each page while pointing to the illustrations to help explain the action.
5. Ask questions out loud as you read. Ask listeners to predict what will happen next, how they would feel if they were in the story of the meaning of word that might be new. Limit your questions to one or two so they do not disrupt the flow of the story.
6. After you finish the story, have a conversation that focuses on connecting the text to the listeners’ lives and experiences.