This week’s assignment in Classrooms That Work focused on what sets exceptional teachers apart from typical teachers, and creating enthusiastic readers. The article What I've Learned about Effective Reading Instruction also stressing the importance of quality teachers. Based on the readings, I believe that an essential motivator for skilled readers is a teacher reading aloud. When I observed teacher read-alouds in my former observations, they excited students about reading.

            Teachers reading to the class encourages students to read other books by the same author or about the same subject. Classrooms That Work points out the necessity of reading both fact and fiction to students. Without realizing, my first pick to read aloud to a class would be something such as The Cat in the Hat, because that is a personal favorite. However, some students may be more interested in an information book about cats. When setting up my classroom, I will need to have both types of books readily available for students to have a wide variety of books.

            After reading the article by Mr. Allington and Classrooms That Work, I am interested in finding out if teacher read-alouds motivated others to read other books by the same author or in the same series? Also, which books were your childhood preference: fact or fiction, and is that your first choice today?