How to Make Read-Alouds Fun and Effective for All Ages

Read-alouds are a popular activity in pre-school and early elementary school classrooms—and for good reason. 

Early on in a child’s reading life, listening to interesting stories read skillfully by teachers is a key to improving a student’s ear for fluent reading, and for leading kids in discussions about vocabulary, background knowledge, and critical literary and textual features such as plot, tone, figurative language, and character development.

The consensus on the effectiveness of read-alouds has been clear for a while, too. In 1985, the federal Commission on Reading concluded they are the “single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading.” 

This is especially true when students are just learning how to read and are struggling with issues like phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and comprehension, but the commission warned that read-alouds shouldn’t be “discarded altogether” for older, more skilled readers. While high schools tend to guard their time-on-task zealously, the practice of read-alouds “should continue throughout the grades,” they asserted. 

Author and educator Doug Lemov agrees, and says carving out time to read-aloud with middle school or even high school students can help improve fluency and strengthen the comprehension muscles we want them to flex: “analysis and interpretation cannot happen without a fluent reading,” he said. Meanwhile, a 2013 study focused on middle school read-alouds found they can help model positive reading behaviors for reluctant readers, expose students to beautiful language and literature, and guide them toward higher-level thinking. 

Former educator and literacy coach Kathy Collier writes that for many teachers, read-alouds are one of the most “impactful” strategies in their tool box. “It gives students opportunities to interact with complex, grade-level text, which is necessary for rigor and growth,” she said, but also provides teachers with an opportunity to model fluency, effective comprehension, and strategies to work through problem areas in a text, like looking up words, using context clues, and summarizing—“all of which students need for strong reading development.” 

Of course, simply reading aloud to kids won’t do the trick. 

The most impactful methods require “a significant commitment by the teacher,” concludes Elizabeth Heubeck, in a recent article for EdWeek. “In its most effective form, the read-aloud demands thoughtful advanced preparation,” and the techniques teachers need to be aware of will vary across the grade levels, and to some degree across disciplines. 

Here are hand-picked strategies to help you effectively implement read-alouds in your classrooms. 

1. SELECTING THE RIGHT STORY

Educators across all grade levels agree: One of the most important components of a successful read-aloud is a book that both interests students—and represents a good basis for the teaching of reading and literacy. 

Before selecting a book, former educator and reading researcher Molly Ness tells EdWeek that teachers should ask themselves questions like: “Will the vocabulary present a challenge?” and “Do students have the background knowledge to grasp the text’s content?” Thinking through these can help you plan for developmentally appropriate texts that engage students, connect to relevant or recently-covered content areas, and help them progress as readers, too.

If you have a few options—or want to ensure you’re choosing something students are genuinely interested in—give them a say in the process, writes education professor Christie Rodgers. Try surveying students about the types of stories they enjoy, or present them with a few options and put it up for a vote. 

2. DEDICATING TIME

Although most elementary school teachers are aware of the benefits of read-alouds, Heubeck cites a recent survey of early childhood teachers which shows that more than half don’t allot intentional time for the practice. 

Rodgers argues that for students to reap the benefits that read-alouds have to offer, they should occur daily—especially for younger learners. “Once I made a commitment to read to my students daily, it quickly became the thing we all looked forward to in each class,” she said.  

Older students can benefit, too. Middle school ELA teacher Kasey Short writes that she sets aside at least five minutes each day—usually the last five minutes of the period, to create suspense and leave students “wondering what will happen next”—to read to her students. It’s a slice of time that she’s often asked how she manages to “give up”, but Short says it pays off: “Spending this time each day enriches the classroom community, allows me to share a love of reading, enhances my language arts instruction, and exposes students to new authors, genres, and themes.”  

3. STRATEGIC PAUSES AND PROBING

In a 2022 review that consulted dozens of studies on effective read-aloud strategies, researchers concluded that strategically pausing during oral reading to ask pertinent and clarifying questions helps students practice key literacy skills. 

During your reading, stopping to ask questions like: “How do you think this character feels? Why?” or “Why do you think this character did ___ or did not do ___?” can help students create important connections with a text, researchers said. Meanwhile, questions like: “What do you think will happen next—and why?” can push students to “go beyond the text” to infer meaning, exercise their background knowledge, and make predictions. 

Collier writes that it is important to think strategically about how often you pause—and what you ask students to do. For a 10-minute read-aloud, she recommends stopping four times, which helps sustain a pleasant reading experience, rather than a “choppy and inauthentic” one. 

When reading aloud with older students, pauses may focus on questions that stir debate or prompt students to consider a character’s motivations, or may involve a teacher modeling how they tackle confusing passages by jotting down a note in the margins, re-reading, or stopping to do some research.

4. CROSS-EXAMINING DIFFICULT VOCABULARY

Read-alouds are particularly useful for interrogating tough vocabulary words in the moment, and helping students develop—and expand—their own definitions of key terms. 

K-8 teacher Dianne Stratford writes that before engaging in a read-aloud, teachers should identify words to focus on and pre-teach. During read-alouds, help students expand their understanding by incorporating quick activities that help them create “student-friendly definitions” for terms and relate them to their own experiences. 

For example, younger students encountering words like “frustrated” or “anxious” or can use their teacher-provided definitions—and the context of the text—to create their own definition and share times when they felt these emotions. Repeating the word correctly, creating their own understanding of it, and connecting it with a memory makes it far more likely that they’ll remember it and deploy it correctly in their own speech and writing.

In her middle school classroom, ELA teacher Carly Van Der Wende prompts students as soon as they enter the room with a new vocabulary word that will be part of the day’s read-aloud. Together they spend five to ten minutes dissecting the word by using it in written sentences “researching synonyms and antonyms, and creating a pictorial representation of it,” she said. 

5. MODEL ‘FIGURING IT OUT’

Effective read-alouds can also model for students what to do when they encounter words or phrases they don’t understand while reading—a practice research shows is especially effective when working with jargon-rich texts in biology, physics, or history. 

When reading through more difficult texts, middle school English teacher Christina Torres writes in EdWeek that she will often stop at difficult words and model metacognitive thinking in real-time by “questioning my reactions to plot points or literary devices, or connecting the story to other things we’ve read” and later, asking students to do the same. 

In your classroom, consider stopping the reading to model in real-time how you would tackle confusing information by using strategies like looking up unfamiliar words, using context clues, or starting at the top—or at the point where you lost the thread—and re-reading difficult text as needed. 

6. GETTING STUDENTS INVOLVED

Teachers of younger students often take on the bulk of oral responsibilities during read-alouds, but Todd Finley, a professor of English education, says that when working with older students, you should consider sharing the load.

According to Finley, practices like round robin reading—where students read orally from a shared text, one after the other—are popular, but research suggests it can stigmatize poor readers, weaken comprehension due to frequent interruptions, and hinder fluency and pronunciation. Instead, Finley recommends choral reading, in which a teacher and students read passages aloud together. A 2011 study found that as little as 15 minutes of choral reading per week helped improve decoding and fluency among sixth graders.

At Concourse Village Elementary School in the Bronx, New York, students choral read one text every day over the span of a week—a teacher reads aloud first, with a focus on intonation and elocution, then students read together as a class, in pairs, and on their own. With each reading they hone on in a new skill: annotating, identifying important details and craft choices, and drawing conclusions about the main idea. 

Lemov told EdWeek that he integrates choral reading as part of a 20-minute classroom “reading-cycle” with older students, which helps them build up their reading stamina and attention. The cycle includes a period of teacher read-alouds, student read-alouds in pairs, and ends with silent reading. 

7. INFUSING DRAMA

When reading to younger students, Rodgers suggests embracing your “inner performance artist” while reading by reacting to big changes in the plot or the characters. “Children of all ages love to be entertained, and watching a teacher bring a story to life is magical.” Expressing surprise, sorrow, anger, or other relevant emotions at the appropriate moments in a text can also help model—and tease out—some of the themes and plot developments for younger students, she adds. 

Drama works for older students too. Torres, for example, tries on different appropriate accents with her middle school students—like a Southern affect while reading To Kill a Mockingbird. “Not only does it show students that reading can be playful and imperfect (their reactions to different voices are always amusing), but it also helps conjure the world of the novel and attract interest in the story.” 

English teacher Chanea Bond told Edutopia that when she reads Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston with her high school students, they often struggle to get through the Southern dialect it’s written in. While she doesn’t necessarily read aloud herself, asking kids to follow along as an audiobook version recorded by actress Ruby Dee plays helps bring the story home for students. “All of a sudden, they start to get it,” she said. 

8. READ ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

In 2023, literacy expert Tim Shanahan told Edutopia that by middle school, students should learn “the specialized reading routines” of the disciplines they’ll study as they progress to high school and beyond. This involves learning not only how to read complex texts, but how to read them like historians, mathematicians, or scientists. 

Read-alouds can help students wade through complex texts and get more out of it than they would reading it on their own. “There is this idea that if you just practice reading, you’re going to get good at it,” Shanahan said. “But when you compare that kind of practice to working with a teacher, the payoffs are very different.” 

In your classroom, this might look like leading older students through readings of thorny historical texts like the Declaration of Independence or classic works of literature like Shakespeare’s Macbeth or Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, before having them annotate and pull out insights on their own. A good, fluent read-aloud of texts filled with scientific jargon or flourishes of Elizabethan English can reduce friction for younger listeners by emphasizing the language's inherent rhythm; placing the proper emphasis on key phrases; and slowing the language down when it becomes particularly difficult.

Younger students benefit from read-alouds across curricula, too. Chelsea Miro, a K-12 learning specialist and former teacher writes that reading students engaging picture books about math can create new and “inviting” ways to engage with mathematical concepts, for example. A 2023 study concurs, finding that math picture books help improve student engagement and attitudes towards math, help students better understand representations like graphs, and even boost performance on discrete tasks like counting.