Join us as we celebrate World Read Aloud Day (WRAD) on February 5, 2025. Each year, WRAD helps spotlight storytelling’s power to immerse young readers in diverse perspectives and broaden their understanding of the world. This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of WRAD, which has grown into a global movement since its launch by LitWorld.
Reading aloud nurtures literacy, cognitive growth, and emotional well-being in children. In addition to helping to boost academic learning, reading aloud can reduce stress and strengthen bonds between children and caregivers. Explore how Reading Coach and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat help you transform classroom reading activities and inspire lifelong learners.
Bring reading to life for every student
Reading Coach, a Learning Accelerator, helps students discover the joy of reading while improving literacy skills—whether practicing challenging words or co-creating stories with responsible AI. Reading Coach makes reading fun for everyone.
By providing real-time feedback and personalized tips, it helps students improve reading skills at their own pace by tracking their progress over various time periods, ensuring they remain engaged and continue to build their reading fluency.
Reading Coach is designed to support independent reading practice, making it an ideal tool to use throughout the school year—and to celebrate occasions like WRAD. To keep learners motivated, it offers encouragement through digital badges and rewards. Readers can earn streak badges for completing reading practice and they can also unlock new characters and story settings for every 20 minutes they spend reading. Rewards can even be traded with friends, gamifying the reading experience and inspiring curiosity for what comes next!
Reading Coach empowers students to build fluency at their own pace to:
- Improve literacy with engaging AI-generated stories featuring customizable characters and settings.
- Focus on specific words to overcome fluency challenges.
- Practice passages in 81 languages with multilingual support.
Whether at school or home, students can engage in personalized, AI-powered reading practice that keeps them motivated and on track. Bookmark and download the Reading Coach Quick Guide PDF to learn how to get started. Check out our “Educator’s guide to Reading Coach” blog post to learn how to use the tool.
From practice to progress, keep students engaged
Reading Coach offers three easy ways for students to get more involved in their reading. By providing helpful and interactive formats, it helps students build confidence, improve comprehension, and strengthen fluency. Explore these three engaging modes to make reading experiences personalized and unique:
- Create a story: Generate interactive, AI-powered stories by choosing characters, settings, and reading levels in 14 languages. Students decide what happens in each chapter, exploring practice words tailored to their needs.
- Read a passage: Access a digital library from ReadWorks, featuring over 110-leveled texts organized by Lexile level, genre, and word count. A variety of topics provide engaging, educational content that aligns with students’ interests.
- Add a passage: Upload custom passages, like assigned articles, textbook excerpts, or the student’s own writing. This mode supports individual learning needs and specific objectives, making practice more targeted and meaningful.
With Reading Coach, every practice session becomes an opportunity for students to progress their reading level and build their creativity. Take the Reading Coach training module on Microsoft Learn to learn how to integrate this tool into your classroom and lessons.
Create immersive read-aloud sessions
WRAD is the perfect opportunity to introduce inclusive and engaging reading activities using Reading Coach. Try these ideas to celebrate literacy in your classroom:
- Build confidence with reading practice: Use Reading Coach to help students prepare for group read-alouds. Real-time feedback on pronunciation and fluency can help them feel more confident.
- Create read-aloud challenges: Motivate students by tracking progress and rewarding reading streaks. Celebrate achievements with class-wide recognition or small prizes.
- Collaborative storytelling: Use the story-generating capabilities in Reading Coach to inspire students to co-write stories using AI. Encourage group sharing to make storytelling an interactive and fun experience.
- Host multilingual reading sessions: Incorporate stories in various languages, encouraging students to explore diverse perspectives and cultures.
In addition to WRAD, classrooms and families across the US will celebrate the joy of reading during Read Across America Day on March 3, 2025. Mark these events and join each movement by transforming your classroom into a hub of literary exploration and skill building. Use Reading Coach to create immersive read-aloud sessions that highlight stories from your classroom, your community, and around the world.
Design engaging activities with Copilot Chat
Celebrate the power of stories and literacy by using Copilot Chat to plan your WRAD and Read Across America Day activities. Copy and paste these prompts into Copilot Chat to generate book recommendations, fluency strategies, engagement ideas, and event plans tailored to your grade level or audience.
Adjust the prompts as needed to make them uniquely yours and inspire a love of reading in your students:
- Generate a list of culturally appropriate books suitable to read aloud to [grade level] students on World Read Aloud Day. For each, include 3-5 comprehension questions designed to spark age-appropriate discussions.
- Create a detailed set of read-aloud strategies specific to [book title] to help [grade level] students improve their reading fluency, such as modeling expressive reading, echo reading, or choral reading. Include tips on how to scaffold for varying reading and language abilities.
- Suggest creative strategies to keep [grade level] students engaged during the read-aloud of [book title]. Ensure strategies are culturally appropriate, promote active participation and comprehension, and include options for differentiation to support diverse learners.
- Design an engaging event for Read Across America Day aimed at [specific audience, e.g., K-12 students or families] that takes place in [location, e.g. the school library or classroom]. Incorporate creative ways to build a love of reading and suggest culturally inclusive books for different grade levels. Include promotional ideas and a timeline for planning.
Keep refining responses by exploring questions suggested by Copilot Chat or by following up with more specific prompts to further personalize the activities.
Events like World Read Aloud Day and Read Across America Day are more than just celebrations of stories—they’re movements that highlight the vital role of literacy in building inclusive communities. By using Copilot Chat to design creative and engaging activities and empowering your students with innovative tools like Reading Coach, you can inspire a lifelong love of reading, amplify voices, and create a brighter, more equitable future.
As we approach these celebrations, make them occasions to remember and carry the spirit of each into every day of the year.
