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,