Read Aloud Tips For Parents: Think-Aloud When You Read-Aloud

If you are an inexperienced parent, or grew up in a home where positive parenting skills weren’t modeled, here’s the very best tip I can give you for building relationships of trust with children and assuring that they have a great life: Read aloud to them. Every day. Both now while they are young, and long into the future–well after they are able to read to themselves.

Read Aloud Books are Powerful Tools for Building Relationships and Brains.

It is a widely accepted reality that reading aloud to a child is the single-most effective way to help her develop her own early literacy skills like building a vocabulary and recognizing sounds and letters. Reading aloud is one of the most important things you can do now and in the future to help your child build literacy skills.

Research also shows that the way you read to a child, and the way you interact with the words is important. Your children are watching you model how to be a good reader, so if you want to help create great readers, it’s good for a grownup to develop an additional technique critical for read-aloud books: Think-Aloud.

Think-Aloud Makes Read Aloud More Effective

As you read, stop periodically to ask questions about the book. Make observations about the characters in the book, or about the pictures. As you do so, you improve your child’s ability to make connections between pictures, words and their own world. Researchers tell us that there are three good ways children can “make connections” with a book:

1. Connecting the book to their own experiences
2. Linking what they are reading to universal concepts
3. Connecting the book to other “texts” including literature, movies, or music

Connecting to Life Experience

Initially, I chose the book Escargot as a read aloud for my grandchildren because of the loveable character and fun illustrations, but it soon occurred to me that Escargot (the main character in the story) actually teaches a child and a parent how to Think-Aloud as the book progresses. Escargot does this by asking you to interact with the book in uncommon ways and to “Think-aloud” as you read. For example, he asks your child, “Tell me, what do you think is my most beautiful part? My shell? My neck? My tentacles?”

Escargot has just given you the opportunity to pause to consider. As your child thinks about which snail parts he likes best and then gives you a response–“I like his tentacles best,” you’ve begun a short interruption to the story that will enhance your child’s reading comprehension abilities.

You could respond by asking if your child knows what a snail uses his tentacles for, allowing your youngster to connect the book to his own life experience because you’ve recently been on a snail safari in your backyard and learned that snails use their tentacles for sight and for smelling.

Connecting to universal concepts

Alternatively, you could say, “I think I like his striped shirt the best.” You’ve just thrown your child a curveball. He can pause and look at the snail’s shirt, consider that it wasn’t one of the options he had to choose from, and then agree whether or not he likes the shirt or some other characteristic altogether. Maybe he likes Escargot’s tiny hat. You’ve just connected to a “universal concept” of the freedom of choice–we all get to choose what we like. We even get to choose whether or not we like carrots and croutons and vinaigrette, as Escargot does later in the book.

Connecting a book to other texts

As the book progresses, Escargot continues to give you opportunities to Think-Aloud: “Let’s talk about our favorite animals,” says Escargot. “Is yours the dog? The cat? The platypus? The wildebeest? The lemur? The hippopotamus? The snail?”

Here’s an example of an opportunity to connect this book to other texts. Chances are if your youngster knows what a platypus, wildebeest, lemur or hippopotamus is, it’s because he’s encountered one in another text. As I sit here now and ponder any text I know of that refers to a wildebeest, Disney’s Lion King is the only reference I can recall. Yet I know what a wildebeest is. How did I initially learn that?

Without an ability to connect words to an idea or to a picture, words like wildebeest and hippopotamus are simply nonsense words to a child. I’m not certain, but I suspect that may be one of the reasons the author included them–they are not typical options when one considers “favorite animals.” You and your child are going to have to Think-Aloud to decide which animal is a favorite.

Almost everyone knows what a cat or a dog is, but a wildebeest? Encountering the word wildebeest (possibly for the first time) in this book will give your little one an opportunity to add the word to his vocabulary. In the future, whether with your help or entirely by happenstance, your child will probably encounter that word again. If the word is introduced together with a photograph or drawing, the child’s reading comprehension abilities will take another leap!

What if I do this wrong?

There are no “rules” for Thinking-Aloud and Asking-Aloud as you Read-Aloud. You can’t really mess it up. Two or three questions per reading session are usually sufficient. Just follow the natural flow of the story and ask questions or make observations about the story that seem interesting to you. Soon, your child will be the one asking the questions, as parents of most three-year-olds know all too well.

Later in the book when Escargot asks you to kiss him, you may practice more Thinking-Aloud. Do you want to kiss Escargot? Will you actually do it?

Do you like carrots? What would you do if someone put something you didn’t like in your salad?

Finally, never allow yourself to feel that reading aloud for short bursts of time is inconsequential. “Spending 5 minutes daily adds up to over 30 hours of total reading time in one year,” reminds Sarah Mackenzie of the Read Aloud Revival podcast. Your efforts to read daily with your child will be a major contribution to your child’s literacy levels. And even better, it will be a major contribution to your relationship of love and trust with your child.