Reading Aloud It Is Important

Looking and searching for a way to get your middle school students into reading, help them expand vocabulary, build listening skills, and expose them to different writing styles. Teachers are missing one important element that may help students and that element is reading aloud. When students reach a certain grade and age this element somehow vanishes in the classroom. Primary teachers do read aloud to students within their classroom. Teachers in our middle school classrooms should be reading books aloud but do not always find time to continue reading to their middle grade students.


Reading aloud to middle school students is so important but it seems to be forgotten. Unfortunately, reading aloud is done less with middle school students who delight in having someone read aloud to them. Let them re-experience the magic of their younger years when a teacher read books to them. It does not matter what subject area or genre, be it picture books, chapter books, short stories, or magazines take the time to read aloud.

Reading aloud means giving back to the middle school students the time to experience adventure, explore and discover faraway places, meet people and cultures. Reading aloud to students helps your students get better at oral reading and you are making a significant, positive, and lasting impression on you them.


A student named Alberto Manguel was told by his principal that he was too old to be read to but did he give up the practice?


“I gave up the practice [of being read to] — partly because being read to gave me enormous pleasure, and by then I was quite ready to believe that anything that gave pleasure was somehow unwholesome. It was not until much later … that the long-lost delight of being read to came back to me.” (From A History of Reading, Viking, 1996, by Alberto Manguel