The Missouri Reader Vol. 37, Issue 1 | Page 26

The English language spoken in a manner
distinctly different from that in television
sitcoms or on MTV. (p. 16)
For this article, we chose to explore how reading
aloud can help students achieve what is required of
them as outlined in the Common Core State
Standards for Reading Foundational Skills for K-5.
For our purposes, we utilized the current outline of
the Common Core State Standards for grades K-5 that
divides skills into 4 sub-skills for teachers to address
with their students: print concepts, phonological
awareness, phonics and word recognition, and fluency
(Common Core, 2012). These foundational skills
provide what students need to develop reading
comprehension, which we also included as an
important skill for students to develop through
teacher read alouds. Below is a highlight of the
research about the positive impacts of reading aloud as
it connects to each of these five areas.

Print Concepts
Students must understand print concepts to
support their comprehension and vocabulary
development. Print concepts refer to the
understanding of the conventions of print, such as the
way a book opens, knowing to read left to right and
top to bottom, alphabet knowledge, and recognizing
punctuation. Reading aloud to students reinforces
these concepts. According to Clay (1993), teachers
need to provide instruction and practice in the
conventions of print. If print conventions do not
become second nature in reading, they will continue
to become stumbling blocks in the future.
―Reading to children introduces them to the
language of books, which is different from
speech and conversation. Including reading
aloud in a well-balanced reading program
appears to build critical concepts about reading
including book concepts, story structures,
literary language, and specialized vocabulary
and begin to anticipate that particular
structures will occur within written language‖
(Dorn, French, & Jones, 1998, p. 30).
―Create an environment that is print-rich and
offer activities to provide a rich, motivational
exposure to the English language‖ (Cecil,
1999, p. 42).
"Shared reading is designed to be used with
very young readers to model how readers look

at, figure out, and operate on the print.
During shared reading, teachers typically use
an enlarged text called a big book. Big books
permit teachers to guide and demonstrate for
children how to operate effectively on the
print" (Reutzel & Cooter, 2004, p. 394).

Phonological Awareness
Phonemic awareness is the recognizing of
individual sounds or phonemes. It is the underlying
skill that helps children become prepared to make
connections between sounds and letters. Reading
aloud can provide students with the appropriate
sound-letter connections and can benefit long term
language development.
―Studies suggest that programs that encourage
high levels of student engagement and
interaction with print (for example, through
read-alouds, shared reading, and invented
spelling) yield as much growth in phonemic
awareness abilities as programs that offer only a
focus on oral language teaching‖ (Cunningham,
Cunningham, Hoffman, & Yopp, 1998, p. 5).
―Teachers of young children can encourage play
with spoken language as part of a broader
literacy program. Nursery rhymes, riddles,
songs, poems, and read-aloud books that
manipulate sounds are all effective vehicles‖
(Cunningham et al., 1998, p. 6).
―Reading aloud enables children to hear the
rich language of stories and texts they cannot
yet read on their own or might never have
chosen to read‖ (Routman, 2003, p. 18).
―Playing with alliteration also tunes children in
to the sounds our language makes. In wholegroup instruction, [the teacher] reads aloud
books, poems, and nursery rhymes that play
with beginning sounds‖ (Diller, 2007, p. 90).

Phonics and Word Recognition
Reading aloud helps students increase their
word recognition and verbal phonics skills, even if
it is just recognizing the word spoken. Once they
can use the word in speech, then it can be added to
their reading and writing vocabulary, leading them
to explore more challenging texts with more
complex words.
―Reading aloud to children can be a very
©The Missouri Reader, 37 (1) p.26