Read Alouds in the Classroom: The Importance of Communication

There are many influential benefits of using read alouds in the daily classroom agenda. Teachers can utilize this strategy in order to help students produce better comprehension of texts as well as promote deeper understanding. It is extremely easy for students to get off task and stretch an exact meaning of something into something completely different. This is why the teacher is there to direct the conversation and keep it on the correct subject line. In the article, the author talks about getting students away from books that contain pictures and presenting them with more text based materials. This idea can be good as well as bad for several reasons. To start with, students may not have any type of schema to branch off of, highlighting their extreme need for something to make a connection to. Students also desperately need something to break up the rigorous solid page of words. I do not see how asking a student to read an excessive amount of words that are crammed onto a sheet of paper be productive. Students can only be expected to stay engaged for so long and even the average adult has trouble with excessive reading. This is one of the many reasons why students need to have items that break up the bulk of the material such as spaces, pictures, fonts, etc. These help students take a slight break and think about what they just briefly read. I personally think that students benefit more from having pictures to relate to because they have visuals for what is being discussed. And yes, sometimes students can infer completely different meanings from a picture than what the text is trying to get across but that responsibility partially remains with the teacher as well. If there is a specific point that the teacher is trying to stress, then the teacher needs to clearly direct the class discussion in that direction. This lets the students know that this could potentially become important and useful for future classes. The teacher also needs to be incredibly prepared and by doing this, the students know that he/she cares about what is being instructed. Students learn by practice and vitalizing the resources that are given to them. When they are constantly directed and shown what is clearly expected, students know what to do. This as well as every other strategy, has its quirks and kinks but I can definitely promise you that if pictures are completely eliminated, engagement will drastically decrease.

1)In the article, it talks about how students talk about their own experiences more readily becomes it is easier to recover. As a classroom teacher, wouldn't you rather students understand how to properly make connections?
2)If teachers are carefully directing read alouds then how are students able to learn from each other, other than by just listening to each other speak?