Sound Effects Read-aloud

My weekend project is tidying up a document in which I list, categorize, and link all of the story activities that I’ve done/do. This means that I need to make sure that I have a specific post for each of them!

You may have read about this in my lesson plan overviews for Houdini or Esperanza, or you may have missed those posts.

A sound effects read-aloud is a great during-reading strategy to use when you want to add some excitement to the reading process and/or when there is vocabulary in a chapter with which students are not very familiar. Simply assign sound effects to select vocabulary in the chapter (don’t overdue it!), and then assign each sound effects to several students. I typically use this when reading a new text, but it could also be used when reading a story that was previously asked in class.

1. Select the vocabulary that you want to emphasize, either because it is unfamiliar or because it lends itself nicely to sound effects.

Type up each structure on a card and write a description of the sound effect. I recommend including all permutations of the structure, since students can be brain-dead sometimes 🙂 See an example here.

Hand out one card to each student in your class (most likely, several students will have the same sound effect).

If the vocab is unfamiliar, introduce the sound effect vocab to the entire class (to establish meaning) before reading. If it is familiar vocab, don’t do this so that it is more fun while reading when all of  a sudden you hear a sound effect!

Read the story! As students hear their vocab, they stand and do the sound effects.

Instead of using sound effects, Cindy Hitz uses TPR to do the same thing! I suggest adding both strategies into your rotation so that your students stay engaged in reading!