Digital Read Aloud

Have you ever thought of using digital read alouds in a reading center? The other night I was lost in You Tube land and started searching for some of my favorite books I use while teaching. I was pleasantly surprised at all the videos that have been created of books being read aloud. Some of them have even been animated! Love it! You could use them easily on an interactive board or an iPad to read to your students or have them use a mobile device or computer in a reading center to read or reread books. You could even take it a little farther with older kiddos and have them video themselves reading a book aloud. Create a classroom You Tube account and you will have an audio book library to call your own. Older students could also animate picture books using Movie Maker or Photo Story.

Here are a few of my favorites that I ran across:

Who doesn't love the pigeon? I use these books to teach persuasive writing.

I use this one to teach point of view.

Another great website for digital books is www.wegivebooks.org There are tons of both fiction and nonfiction books on this site and they are FREE! The books are not read aloud, but I have projected them on the board or had students read them at our classroom computers. There are a lot of nonfiction books about animals that could be used for research projects. You could also project the nonfiction ones on the board to discuss text features. One more idea...you could use a screen recorder to record yourself reading one of the books from the website. Then, students could listen and read along. If you have Promethean ActivInspire, just use the video recorder to do this (see a tutorial on how to do this here). 

So...the next time you want to spice up your read aloud, check You Tube or WeGiveBooks to see if a video has been made. Or...make your own to share with your kiddos. OR...have your kiddos make one to share!