What Slows Down a Read Aloud
Picture books need to be under 500 words (and that's only when you overshoot 350.) Pacing and word choice are important. Manuscripts must be read out loud. I know these things, but a lightbulb clicked on recently: time my read aloud story to ensure it reads like a low word count story. So, I timed myself reading aloud the same books as my last post. Not because I'm lazy, because I'm efficient. Very efficient. Kind of like how I'm efficiently working my way through a bag of candy corn right now. Anyhow, here they are: Kitten's First Full Moon (Henkes, 2004) - 264 words - 3 minutes to read (1.5 seconds/word) Children Make Terrible Pets (Brown, 2010) - 372 words - 3' 40" to read (1.7 seconds/word) The Boy Who Cried Ninja (Latimer, 2011) - 517 words - 4 minutes to read (2.2 seconds/word) You may be saying "Well, there's some variability each time you read a story." And you are right. I didn't note how many times my ...