Share and Shared Alike: A Cheat Sheet for Shared Reading

What is shared reading?

Shared reading is an interactive reading experience in which children join in reading a story or book, guided by an experienced reader. With Hooked on Phonics shared reading animated stories, we want to mimic this activity as closely as possible.

Traditionally, shared reading has been done in the classroom with big books; however, in the absence of a teacher, we used Visual Phonics, animation, and actors to bring to life the same sounds and words that the kids learn in their Learn to Read workbooks. (Visual Phonics refers to our method of presenting phonics instruction through animated text.)

How it works

Hooked on Phonics shared reading animation highlights words in the stories so they can be seen and read clearly by children. We use stories from the workbooks to provide kids with the opportunity for repeated readings of predictable text and words. The amusing stories and funny illustrations keep children interested and engaged but don’t distract them from focusing on the text. Our animated workbook stories also help kids practice sight word recognition, fluency, tracking text from left to right, and other important stuff.

But most of all, the shared reading stories illustrate one of the main principles of the new Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read program: using phonics as a tool to help children learn to read fun stories and encourage a lifelong love of reading.

See for yourself