Read Aloud method was first introduced by Jim Trelese in his book entitled The Read Aloud Handbook. In this method, children’s brain is set to associate reading as a fun activity, therefore this method is considered to be the most effective method to teach reading to children. Read Aloud is a simple method yet has many benefits; parents only need to spare 10-15 minutes a day to read books to their child(ren) expressively.
The best time to practice Read Aloud is during children’s golden age (0-5 years) because their brain is like a sponge that can absorb things very quickly. Thus, during this moment parents need to cultivate children’s love for books, keeping in mind that the goal of Read Aloud is not to make children able to read independently in early age.
Here are some benefits of doing Read Aloud:
- Stimulates children’s brain: children who often read books have their imagination and language skill development. They will also develop a sense of curiosity (towards the continuation of the story).
- Trains children’s hearing: by reading to children loudly, they will learn to listen and learn about intonation, voice volume, expressions, and pause.
- Education benefit: by seeing their parents modeling the good, correct, smooth, and meaningful way of reading, children can develop their vocabularies and knowledge, grow their oral language skills, and understand sentence structures.
- Trains attention span and memory: when being read by their parents, children hear and listen better and it helps them concentrate.
- Builds parents-children bonding
- Prepares children to learn reading in elementary school, have high self-confidence, and build moral awareness through the stories in the books.
In order to gain the most benefits through Read Aloud, here are some tips!
Start with a conversation as an opening. Show the book to the children and tell them a short piece of information about the book cover, such as the cover image, the book author, and the book illustrator.
Go through the details of the illustration and read the book expressively in order to make it interesting. Parents can also make some interactions in the middle of the activity, such as asking about children’s feelings about the story or asking whether they have questions. Parents can also ask questions to trigger them to express their thought or idea about the story.
Sources: Ministry of Education and Culture, The Asian Parent, Ministry of Finance
