Quality Read-alouds Matter: How you Teach is Just as Important as What you Teach

In this manuscript we show how readalouds can significantly enrich student vocabulary and comprehension by demonstrating enhancements that will foster student learning and language development. We anchor our examples to empirical evidence demonstrating that the content of a readaloud (i.e., the what we teach) as well as the quality of the instruction (i.e., the how we teach content during a readaloud) are important and necessary to enhance student learning. We use authentic scenarios to illustrate the difference between a readaloud taught with basic instructional fidelity and a readaloud with basic instructional fidelity that was enhanced with features of instructional quality. Specific steps to action before, during, and after a readaloud using examples from a first grade readaloud science unit are provided.