World Read Aloud Day is the perfect time to think about how to expand our school celebrations of highly effective, engaging read-alouds to reach our students at home. Families want the best for their children and look to teachers for guidance on how they can support their child's literacy. Read-alouds, paired with effective interactive strategies, are an easy and effective way to support early comprehension, vocabulary, and a love of reading at home. This article presents ten research-based read-aloud strategies and how to share them with families.

10 Read-Aloud Strategies

Strategy	What It Builds	Sample Prompt	What to Look For
1. Identify rhyming words	Phonological awareness (hearing sounds in words)	What two words sound the same at the end?	Rhyming words on most pages
2. Talk about word meanings	Vocabulary (understanding word meanings)	That word means...	Some words for which children do not yet know the meanings
3. Make connections	Comprehension (story understanding)	Did anything like this ever happen to you? Does this remind you of anything?	Events or characters are like children's life experiences
4. Make and check predictions	Comprehension monitoring (checking understanding while reading)	Predict: What do you think will happen? Check: Were you right?	You can usually use clues to guess what's going to happen next on each page, or every few pages
5. Think critically	Reasoning	What do you think...? Why do you think that?	Books that have moral dilemmas or multiple possible endings (i.e., what happens at the end isn't clear)
6. Make inferences	Inferential comprehension (understanding the story by "reading between the lines")	Text clues: What do you notice in the words or pictures that could help you? Background knowledge: What do you know about the world that could help? What can you infer based on these clues?	There are clues that help you figure out what happened in the book when the words and pictures don't tell you directly
7. Point and read	Concepts about print (how print works)	(Point to the text as you read each word.) Encourage your child to point to words as you read.	Some words stand out to help children notice them (e.g., different color or size)
8. Find a letter	Letter knowledge	Can you find the letter ___? Point to and name the letter.	Alphabet books have a letter, pictures, and words related to that letter on each page
9. Say a letter sound	Letter knowledge	What sound does it make? (Point to and make the letter sound.)	Alphabet books have a letter, pictures, and words related to that letter on each page
10. Identify words that start with the letter	Letter knowledge	Which word starts with ___?	Alphabet books have a letter, pictures, and words related to that letter on each page

Sharing Strategies with Families

You can support families’ implementation of these practices by sending just one strategy home to practice per week (except for the last three letter knowledge strategies that can be taught together). Providing incremental tips (rather than an all-at-once approach) about read-aloud practices helps families slowly make transformations in their practices without feeling overwhelmed. 

Research strongly supports showing rather than telling families about desired practices. So, a video clip of you doing each strategy will yield much better results than sending an email about each strategy. Additionally, sending home bookmarks with each strategy and a sample prompt to use can provide a physical reminder of the new practices to support their implementation. 

If possible, also send home appropriate books to practice the strategies. You might partner with a school librarian, public librarian, or curriculum supervisor to access sets of appropriate books for this purpose. If physical books are not possible to acquire, you could provide a link to an appropriate read-aloud video (e.g., YouTube) and prompt parents to pause-and-talk during the video to practice the strategy. Further, if books cannot be found in a child’s home language, video-based books that are in the home language or that can be translated via caption options might also provide a solution. 

Finally, find a way for families to share and celebrate. If you have a class social media account (e.g., Facebook), cloud service account (e.g., Google Drive), or parent platform (e.g., Class Dojo), ask parents to share photos of them reading the books with their children and a post about what prompts they used aligned with the strategy of the week. This will encourage participation in the strategies and provide a platform for families to learn from one another. 

Empowering Read-Alouds

World Read-Aloud Day is a reminder of the power of effective read-alouds. Sharing ten read-aloud strategies with families can empower their read-aloud conversations at home. You play a critical role in supporting your families’ read-aloud practices.

Learn more about ILA's World Read-Aloud Day resources.