Read-Alouds: Magic

Some of my students are very proud of the fact that they can read quite quickly. They can read books in a fraction of the time it might take me to read these books aloud. This can be a good thing. Once they enter college, they will be expected to read a lot in a short amount of time. But my students are not in college yet. Certainly, one of my goals is to encourage my students to read independently as often as they can. It is actually the only assignment I consistently give my students—to read for 20-30 minutes each day. By reading more, they will find reading easier. Very often, their speed and stamina will increase, allowing them to read two or three books in the time it might have taken them to read one book before. And in independent reading, they can read at their own speed.

But another one of my goals is to inspire my students to fall in love with words. I want them to become communicators. I want them to notice and enjoy language, with all of its many synonyms and word choices and other idiosyncrasies. I want them to hear words put together well. I want them to experience the elongated pause of an ellipsis or an m-dash. I want them to hear a sigh or a breathless response. I want them to listen, truly listen.

Reading quickly will not allow students the chance to linger over language. Reading quickly may cause them to miss the nuance in word choice. Reading quickly will never replace the magic of being read to. And no one…absolutely no one is too old for this magic.

Reading aloud to my middle school students does more than simply convey the words of a story or poem or article or book. Most of my students can access the words on their own. I know this. But there is a connection, an intimacy, in reading aloud that cannot exist in a session of silent reading. As I read aloud, we truly share stories. We are a part of something bigger than ourselves. We have truly experienced something together. The story or poem or article becomes ours, and a part of us as a class. At times, we laugh together. We also cry together. We even hold our collective breath together.

The past school year, with all of its chaos and changes, proved this to me. If I felt that my students were stressed beyond their normal levels, all I had to do to restore a sense of calm in our classroom was to read aloud. Most often, I would read the literature we were working on. Sometimes I would read my latest draft of our current writing. This simple act of reading aloud—of slowing things down to truly hear and experience words—took away some of the tension. The change was palpable, even on Zoom!

As more students came back to class in-person, I found that reading aloud was like a magic focusing agent. Students would enter the classroom in a flurry of sound and movement from the hallway passing period. Some were hopeful that no one noticed them getting a bit too close to other students. There was, as is normal in a middle school classroom, general silliness before the bell rang. Then, I would open a story or a book and begin reading aloud, and there was a hush in the classroom. Video screens would pop on, and I could see faces on Zoom. We became one with the words. We were truly together. I read aloud, and we became a community, a community of readers.

Some parents worry that reading aloud to middle school students is a waste of time and lazy teaching. Some administrators share this worry. This worry is unfounded. Read-alouds are not wasted time in a classroom. They are, in fact, a lecture-lab style of pedagogy. There is true modelling. That modelling is nearly always followed by independent practice. Read-alouds are not lazy teaching. In fact, if done well, reading aloud takes a good deal of preparation. I prepare for read-alouds by noting places to stop and talk, to question, to allow for silence. I work on dialect and accents if necessary. I carefully plan my reading. I practice. My students catch on to this early-on, realizing that I often stop at a place where we are all on the edges of our seats. I prepare my read-alouds so that my inflection, even in complex sentences, is correct. I do not want to stumble over words during a read-aloud. Any disruption to a read-aloud breaks the spell of the words in the room.

Over the past few years, I have witnessed my students bristling if an announcement breaks into a read-aloud. They are visibly annoyed at people who come to the classroom door to ask a question or drop off a message. They groan aloud when the classroom phone rings. Without exception, when I finish a section of a read-aloud in a book, students ask for one more chapter or two more chapters or five more chapters. These twelve- and thirteen-year-olds are not much different from small children who sit on laps or next to their adult readers, and when the last page has been turned, say, “Read it again.”

Being read to should be a right afforded to all students—all people—no matter their age. There is a reason that audio books are in demand. People, even adults on their commutes to work, like to be read to. Everyone, no matter what their test scores say, should be allowed to hear good readers read good works. So, I will continue to read aloud to my students this coming school year. I will read aloud to my seventh graders. I will read aloud to my eighth graders. Even the really bright students! Even those who can read quickly on their own. I will read entire books and short stories and poems and articles. When I stop reading or turn the last page, I imagine that they will ask me to read more. And I will.

Note: I recently read You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy. In it, she mentions a relatively new phenomenon called “podfasting” and also refers to people speeding up their audio books 1.5 – 2.0 times the recorded speed. Apparently, people feel that podcasts and audio books take too long to finish. So, they speed them up. Not even a week after reading about this, I was walking in my neighborhood, when I passed a young woman walking in the opposite direction. She held her phone in front of her. She was not wearing earbuds or Air Pods, so I could hear what she was listening to. And what she was listening to sounded like an old episode of “Alvin and the Chipmunks” or voices after breathing in helium! I have the feeling she was either “podfasting” or listening to a fast-paced version of an audio book. I can’t help but wonder if the true intent of a novel by Robert Ludlum, J. K. Rowling, Neal Schusterman, Cassandra Clare, or Stephen King would be lost if it sounded like a cartoon chipmunk. My gut says it would definitely be different.