How to Use American History Read-Aloud Books during Distance Learning

When I was teaching, I loved using read-aloud books! I know that many other teachers love to read aloud to their students. Unfortunately, with distance learning, a traditional read aloud can be difficult or even impossible. To help you during this time, I’ve compiled a few easy steps to help you use American History read-aloud books in your distance learning classroom.

Why use Read-Aloud Books?

Although many people use read-aloud books during language arts time, they can also be used during history class. Read-aloud books help students learn new information about historical time periods and help engage students in the past. They teach historical information in an interesting way that often gets lost in traditional history textbooks. If you’ve never tried doing a read aloud in your history instruction before, try it! I guarantee that with the right books, you and your students will love it!

Where to find American History Read-Aloud Books for Distance Learning?

There are a lot of options for read-aloud books, and it can be overwhelming to know which books to choose! It can take many hours to read books and find ones that are appropriate and fit your learning objectives. To help, I’ve done the work for you! I’ve read and compiled lists of great US History read-aloud books These are teacher-approved books you can start reading with your students today!

Here are the lists I’ve compiled:

Now that you have a list of book titles, you might be wondering where you can find these books. We all know teachers aren’t made of money, and although the library is a great resource if available, we don’t always have the time or ability to go pick them up. That’s where YouTube comes in!

Start by simply searching the title of the book on YouTube. If the book doesn’t come up, try searching for the title and author. Although you may not be able to find every single book, almost all the books in my lists are available on YouTube! If you have a great book that you can’t find a YouTube read-aloud for, consider recording one yourself. Even better, make the video public so other teachers can use it in the future.

How to Assign a Video in Google Classroom

So now you have selected a read-aloud YouTube video, you will need to share it with your students. Here’s a quick tutorial for how to do that if you are using Google Classroom.

1. Open Google Classroom and click on the class you want to share the video with (If you have more than one class you will have to repeat these steps for each class).

2. At the top of the screen, click on the Classwork tab. Click on the Create button. Then you will see a drop-down where you can click Assignment.

3. This will bring you to a new assignment. You can edit the title and instructions as needed. You can adjust more details on the right-hand side (e.g., points, due date, etc.).

4. To add a video, click the Add button (under the instructions box) and click YouTube. This will bring up a window where you can search YouTube to find your read aloud. I always like to search for the video beforehand separately on the YouTube website so I can preview it.

5. Search for the video you want, click on it, then press the Add button at the bottom.

6. Finally, Press Assign in the top right-hand corner to assign the video to your students.

How to Create an Assignment to go with your American History Read-Aloud Video

You may want to create an assignment for your students to complete after watching the read-aloud video. A simple reading response assignment keeps students accountable. To make your life easier, I’ve used Google Forms to create a reading response assignment for you. Here’s how to edit and assign it:

1. Click here to access the reading response. This will open up a new tab. Click the Make a copy button to copy the reading response to your Google Drive.

2. You now have a copy of the Google Form, so you the ability to edit the reading response however you want. You can edit, add, or delete the questions (the form will automatically save as you edit it). You can also change the title and instructions. Edit the reading response to work for your class!

3. When you are finished editing the reading response, go to your Google Classroom and select the class you want to assign the reading response to.

4. At the top of the screen, click on the Classwork tab, then click on the Create button. Then you will see a drop-down where you can click Assignment.

5. This will open a new assignment that you can title and input instructions for. Then, click the Add button and choose Google Drive.

6. This will open your Google Drive where you should see the reading response you edited, which you can select, then press insert.

7. Finally, press Assign!

How to Use American History Read-Aloud Books during Distance Learning