What is the significance of shared reading in the classroom?

Shared reading is a vital instructional strategy in the classroom that promotes literacy development through modeling fluent reading. During shared reading, the teacher reads a text together with the students, providing an opportunity for them to hear fluent reading while seeing the words on the page. This practice showcases expressive reading and proper phrasing, which helps students understand how to decode text effectively and comprehend the material better.

Additionally, shared reading encourages participation, allowing students to engage with the text by predicting what might happen next or identifying key vocabulary. By experiencing a text in this collaborative manner, students also develop a greater love for reading and an understanding of how to approach different genres and writing styles. This shared experience supports not just the learning of decoding skills but also the development of comprehension abilities through discussion and interaction with the text.