Payne, Carleen daCruz (2005). Shared Reading for Today’s Classroom: Lessons and Strategies for Explicit Instruction in Comprehension, Fluency, Word Study, and Genre. Grades K-2. New York: Scholastic.

This handy book would make a useful tool for practicing teachers. It is full of helpful hints and useful strategies for using the shared reading approach to teach reading process skills to young children. Important early emergent and emergent literacy skills are discussed and explained thoroughly. Teachers can utilize this thoughtfully considered manual to expand their use of shared reading with big books to integrate both strategy and skills instruction. Too many teachers teach these very important concepts in isolation from actual texts. Perhaps this is because they need Carleen daCruz Payne to take them gently by the hand through the multiple exciting possibilities that Shared Reading for Today’s Classroom presents.

While visiting early childhood classrooms in many schools, I rarely see big books utilized to the full extent possible, as Payne illustrates so thoroughly in her book. Perhaps busy teachers feel that using big books during circle time is important enough to include in their curriculum sometimes, but lack the background and skills to take advantage of the myriad possibilities shared reading presents for expanding literacy understanding with their youngsters. Those teachers who understand that circle time with a big book is a vital part of their early literacy curriculum will enjoy this book. They will find a writing style that is friendly to frantically busy teachers, including lots of clear and not too wordy explanations, charts and tables, scenarios of strategies used in real classrooms, and a wonderful list of suggested big book titles at the end of the book.

The reader might note some loss of focus and minor vagueness in a few places, such as a discussion about creating a classroom library, which, though useful, is not really what this book is about. There is also a chapter on involving parents at the end of the book, which doesn’t really relate directly to shared reading. Examples of vague points are found in a scenario illustrating Payne leading students to make predictions, which left me skeptical at the accuracy of students’ predictions based on limited information about the text, or when Payne explains that she stops at various spots in the story, but doesn’t explain why she picks the places to stop in the story that she does. Also of note, Regie Routman is cited often in this book. Even though Routman is a thoughtful advocate of student-centered learning, one who describes many useful ideas about ways to teach the language arts in the classroom, Routman’s work depends more on her insights than on carefully researched techniques.

At the same time though, Payne packs so much useful guidance into one short book, that it is easy to overlook those minor problems. For example, a wonderful chart comparing read aloud, shared reading, and guided reading clearly delineates the differences between each vital mode of reading instruction. Many veteran teachers who do not currently use shared reading to its fullest extent might be convinced to give it a try after situating the distinctions and definitions so wonderfully presented in this text in their minds. Shared Reading also provides very clear definitions of terms such as Guided Reading in Kindergarten, Turn and Talk technique for sharing, and Steps for Strategy Instruction. Many of these concepts are not new to teachers. They just have new names and ways of being presented using Shared Reading.

Pages: 160     Price: $19.99     ISBN: 0439365953

Reviewed by Julia Meritt, Texas State University