Build your students' comprehension during shared reading with question asking. Generate a list of questions that pertain to the story to ask before, during and after reading, or simply ask questions that come to mind during the activity. Go on a picture walk of the book and ask students if they can predict what the story will be about based on the pictures, activating their schema and making them more interested in the story. During reading, ask the students to predict what will happen next, ask how they feel about what is happening or if they have ever experienced what is happening in the story; doing so will keep your students engaged and ensure they are paying attention and making meaning out of what is being read. After reading, ask the children how they felt about the story and if they can relate to what happened.
Engage students in choral reading as part of shared reading. With this technique, the teacher and the students read the words in a text in unison, as if reading as a chorus. This tactic promotes fluency, as students emulate your reading, hear one another read and have an opportunity to practice reading. To employ choral reading, select a text that students are familiar with or a book that contains predictable text, such as "The Gingerbread Man." Ask students to read the entire book aloud with you, or encourage them to read aloud the predictable parts of the text together. In addition to building fluency, children will feel as if they are a fundamental part of the reading process and develop an appreciation for reading.
Promote phonemic awareness in your students during shared readings. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to identify the sounds that letters make. Ask students to identify words that begin with certain letters, or state a word and encourage children to name the sound they hear in the beginning, middle or end of it. Point out rhyming words and encourage children to name additional rhyming words.
After reading the text, extend the shared reading experience with a craft activity. Provide children with craft materials and encourage them to draw pictures that illustrate their favorite parts in the story; this is called sketch-to-stretch. Invite children to share their pictures with the class and explain why the parts they illustrated were their favorites. Create specific crafts that relate to the story. For example, children can make paper plate masks or paper bag puppets that resemble characters from the book and use them to retell the story. These craft activities are an engaging way to increase students' comprehension of the stories.