Reading Aloud

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Reading Aloud
By Helen

Reading aloud to first graders is even more important than reading aloud to you fourth graders. First ,first graders enjoy and comprehend books that are above their independent reading levels. Second, First graders need
to have everything that you expect them to do, modeled over and over and over. Here you can model reading with expression, pausing for commas, changing your voice to indicate questions/exclamations etc., You can demonstartate your love for books. You can model looking up factual information. And as Cathy Dee says, first graders need some down time..I also do chapter books after lunch

but also read other short books
as part of science, social stucies and math lessons. (I might introduce measurement with the book HOW BIG IS A FOOT? and have the children cut out newspaper tracings of their own feet and compare them or measure things with them.)
No one mentioned the Boxcar Children books.
My first graders over the past few years have really gotten into them..although as an adult I do not enjoy them as much as some others.
I have read Stone Fox, The Chocolate Touch, How to Eat Fried Worms, Charlottes's Web, The Boxcar Children (#1), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and one around Halloween about a witch on Willoby Lane, I cannot remember the title although I can picture the cover...maybe calledthe Worst Witch?????
Read aloud often..you can find some good suggestions in resource books called Matching literature and Math or Matching Literature and Science etc.
Eric Carle books are always awesome (esp. if you read The Very Lonely Firefly with the lights off...It lights up at the end. Or The Very Lonely Cricket and surprise them with its' chirp.) Tomi De Paula is great esp. when doing fall/Thanksgiving/Pilgrim/Indian studies and you read The Legend Of The Bluebonnets or one of his others. Charlie, the Caterpillar by Dom Delousie (sp?) is one of my absolute favorites...great for a lesson on being kind to each other (feelings).
Rainbow fish books are favorites and along with Swimmy, teach good lessons on friendship. Bill Cosby's LITTL BILL books are always well received and are quick reading. Don't forget Jan Brett, Patricia Paloocha (sp?)..do like I do and cry through Chicken Sunday as you read it to them. Do Robert Munsch...Love You Forever!!
I have thousands of children's books that I have collected over the years and read to my children as often as possible. I even had our school psychologist tell me one day that he had had to stop what he was doing (papersork) and listen to me read a story to my children, because he became so engrossed in the story and *grin* that I read it so well. I apologized for disturbing him..he was working in a conference room just off of my classroom, but he replied that it wasn't that I was too loud etc. it was that he was enjoying it so. Even adults enjoy being read to..if you choose your text carefully!!!!
Yes, yes, yes, read chapter books to your children but don't let that take the place of good books all during the day.
I could go on listing books, I keep thinking of more. Children like I teach, who come from homes without even a newspaper, need someone to model reading and caring for books EVERYDAY! Give them the right start! Don't just use the basal and drill drill drill...it will turn them off. Use big books that they can see and take book walks etc.
Okay, I will get off of my stump...I didn't mean to preach, but I do believe that one of the most important thing that a first grade teacher can give his/her children is the LOVE of books and showing that they are like "magic carpets" is one way to do it! Read to your Children everyday, more than once if possible, and from many genre!