Reading Aloud vs. Shared Reading: What’s the Difference?

    Shared reading and reading aloud are literacy activities that are used within early childhood and elementary classrooms. Both activities assist in improving students language development, literary knowledge, and book handling skills, but the purpose of these activities are not the same. During a shared reading, teacher and students read aloud a large print book, with lots of engaging illustrations. Students will join in the reading to assist in decoding the print by using clues from the page, and will discuss the text while answering questions the teacher has prepared based on the children's needs (Team, 2017). Shared reading aims to provide students with an enjoyable reading experience, while building their language skills, enhancing their knowledge of vocabulary and phonics, and to “teach children systematically and explicitly how to be readers and writers themselves” (Mooney, 2000). Reading aloud is also a group activity with teacher and students, but unlike shared reading, which focuses on phonics and reading development, reading aloud seeks to model fluent reading, improve comprehension strategies, and introduce new vocabulary that students can begin to experiment with in and outside of the classroom (Mooney, 2000, pg. 9). Class discussion during classroom reading aloud is far more teacher-led than shared reading, students should be actively listening to the text, as reading aloud focuses heavily on story comprehension, and when invited by the teacher, discuss the text’s meaning with their peers.  Shared reading and reading aloud may have different focus areas, but they have one very important thing in common: student enjoyment is paramount. 

Book Selection: Why Does the Book Matter? 

Picking the perfect book to read to, or with, your class can be a challenging, and sometimes overwhelming task because there are so many books within the genre of children’s literature. Most educators select books for reading aloud based on their personal favorites and text for shared reading is picked based on grade level, student(s) interest, and classroom skill level (Thelen & Ray, 2020), but even with these parameters in mind the amount of choices can be overwhelming. It is important that educators pick the right books for these types of reading activities in order to ensure student engagement and student learning, in light of this I have provided two books below that are amazing choices that can be utilized for reading aloud or shared reading within an early childhood or elementary classroom.

The Button Box by Margarette Reid follows the story of a young boy who learns that pleasure can be found in the simplest places, in this case his Grandmother's button box, as the boy goes through the contents of the collection he learns about his family and their stories. This book teaches the readers about the value of memories, love, and family. 

    The Button Box is an amazing story that can be utilized for shared reading or reading aloud. The illustrations throughout the book are brightly colored and offer many opportunities for teacher led discussion during student read aloud.

For example, on this page the teacher could ask questions about sorting the buttons into categories, tying in math to their reading, or they could talk about the history of buttons, tying in element of history and social studies. These opportunities for discussion are one of the many reasons this book is great for teacher read aloud, because “read aloud can serve as a way to introduce topics in other content areas, such as social studies, and make the curriculum more inclusive and representative" (Souto-Manning, Martell, & Ladson-Billings, 2016, pg. 95). This opportunity for class discussion can also be utilized during shared reading by focusing on the text itself. Word's and punctuation found within the text could lead to class discussion over vocabulary and grammar. The examples provided above are just a few of the ways this book could promote class engagement and student learning through conversation, but there are many more learning opportunities that can be found within the book. This is good because reading aloud should  be “a dynamic experience with the child playing an active, increasingly involved role" (Mooney, 2000, pg. 8), and shared reading often focuses on reading and rereading texts (Souto-Manning, Martell, & Ladson-Billings, 2016, pg. 97). Additionally, the illustrations throughout the book correspond directly to what is being talked about through the text. The correlation between the illustration and text make this book a good selection for shared reading because the photo's give students a clue to what the text is saying, even if they cannot decode the words. This is very important because during shared reading students are not actively decoding the words, but “...relying on their memory of the text and pictures to read” (Souto-Manning, Martell, & Ladson-Billings, 2016, pg. 96) Lastly, the conversations and lessons had over The Button Box can lead to other, more advanced literature, for reading aloud. The teacher could introduce another book,

for example The Patchwork Quilt by Valerie Flournoy, that has the same theme as The Button Box, providing more opportunities for learning that build off the students, now prior, knowledge of literature. It is important that this book can be reread for shared reading and built off of for reading aloud, because students cannot learn everything they need to know through one lesson. Stories selected for shared reading and reading aloud need to have substance and powerful themes, so students can learn through the story over time without becoming bored, or they will stop engaging with the text and learning will be halted.

The next book I want to highlight is Wishy-Washy Day by Joy Cowley. The story in Wishy-Washy Day follows the character Mrs. Wishy-Washy, as she tries to get all of her farm animals baths, which after many trials and tribulations, (spoiler alert) she is unable to do.

The book Wishy-Washy Day is perfect for shared reading, the text and illustrations alone make it ideal. Books read during shared reading should have large words and pictures, that are memorable within the context of the story, exactly like the ones featured in Wishy-Washy Day.

 There is heavy repetition of certain cite words within the book as well (Anderson, 2020), and there are many learning opportunities and lessons that teachers can choose from, depending on their students' needs and skill levels, when reading this book. For example, on this page the teacher could cover up the word 'closet' and have students guess where the duck is hiding based on clues within the . Additionally, the teacher could cover up the word 'duck' all together and have students guess the type of bird (is it a goose? is it a duck? let your students discuss it and decide!). Also, as I mentioned before this book has a lot of repetition on certain words, 'the', 'hid', and 'in' are featured on nearly every

page, only the type of animal and where they are hiding changes. This repetition of words helps students read the individual pages because the main words are not changing, so the students can utilize the illustrations on the pages to figure out the what unknown words mean in the context of the story (Mooney, 2000). The repetition and grammar make this an easy read, there are not many advanced vocabulary words, but discussion could still be had over this book during read aloud as well. Since read-aloud time can offer mirrors and windows into serve as windows (Souto-Manning, Martell, & Ladson-Billings, 2016) into world's and perspectives students may or may not be familiar with, teachers could ask "Could you imagine living on a farm? What do farmers do?", in order to create a conversation about the unique life style of Mrs. Wishy-Washy. Lastly, like The Button Box, the story Wishy-Washy Day can be built off of and utilized in many classroom lessons over an extended period of time. During shared reading a teacher could change the focus of the lessons, for example, instead of having students use context clues to read the text they could focus on first letter blended sounds, like the 'sh-ed' and

'cl-oset'. For reading aloud teachers could pull in other stories about Mrs. Wishy-Washy with more advanced text, storylines, and themes to continue student learning. Even though the storylines will be different in other the books, over time the "language and illustrations will become more familiar", and, "kids can start to see connections between characters"(Mooney, 2000, pg. 9). Additionally, this familiarity with the text and characters can serve as an anchor to the prior knowledge students gained when reading Wishy-Washy Day, meaning that even though the story may be different, the children will still have reminders of what they know because the new book connects to one they have already read in class.

Both of these books promote student engagement and have ample opportunities for learning experiences, as well as having heartwarming and positive themes that make them perfect for student learning and ensure student enjoyment. 

Literacy activities should be positive for students. Educators should utilize these books during shared reading and read alouds to get young learners to, one day, be readers themselves.