I have raved over and over again on my blog this past school year about the use of Interactive Read Alouds (IRA) to infuse grammar and vocabulary instruction. Each day I began my Language Arts class with what I referred to as a “Do Now.” Students knew to come into class, grab their materials needed for the day based on what was listed on the white board outside of the classroom, and begin their “Do Now.” This year I tried to read from our IRA at least four days a week ten minutes or more, depending on the time we had. The “Do Nows” were directly correlated to the section of text we were reading from our IRA for that day.
What I found was students would get excited when they heard a sentence from our “Do Now” during the IRA. They also were able to internalize vocabulary meanings and grammar principles in a way that I’ve never seen a group of my students do so. I believe a big reason for this is because the grammar and vocabulary were not done in isolation. They connected right into our IRA, and I would also then infuse the concepts from the “Do Now” for that day into Reading and Writing Workshop.
This morning I went through a few weeks of Smartboard lessons from this past school year and took screenshots of our “Do Nows” to share with you as examples of Interactive Edits and Interactive Vocabulary. I hope these examples spur some ideas for how you can use Interactive Read Alouds in your classroom next year to infuse grammar and vocabulary instruction.
(Click on the screen shots below to see as a full screen.)
