Reading Aloud Creates Shared Memories

WRAD Read It Forward Blogging Challenge

Week 1:What do you think is special about reading aloud?

I was pondering this post while out sledding with my eighteen-year-old son today, when he turned to me and said, “I want one of Jasmine’s cookies.”  I knew exactly what he was referring to – the delicious-sounding coconut cookies in the book Jasmine’s Parlour Day by Lynn Joseph.  He loved having that book read to him when he was young.  I can quite easily pull up the image of sitting on the bed in his room, leaning against the wall, pillows piled up around us, reading the book with him.  We read it so often that Jasmine became a literary friend of the family and we had to seek out a market that sold the Trinidad treat. The book opened up a world unknown to my son, a community of sellers with market stalls on an island beach.  he asked questions and we found answers.

Reading aloud promotes a flow of ideas between author and reader and between reader and listener and between listener and his or her world.  Books connect us, but reading books aloud weaves a tapestry of connectedness.  Reading aloud creates shared experiences and within those experiences memories, memories not only of the book, its characters, the plot or setting, but memories of where and when the book was read.  Reading aloud is like storytelling.  The sparkle in the eye of the listener and reader is a magical thing. The energy between reader and listener makes a story come alive.  

I will be celebrating World Read Aloud Day by Skyping, managing a readaloud-a-thon for the families and READING ALOUD with any one who crosses my path.  My favorite World Read Aloud experience last year was reading poems for two voices with Mr. Schu and his students.  My fifth graders are my RAD WRAD Ambassadors and will be spending the week leading up to March 6^th making announcements in classrooms and over the loud speaker as well as creating posters and digital messages.  I am looking forward to recreating this experience this year.

Please Read it Forward

March 6, 2013

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