Audiobooks provide students with:

1. Accessibility: Audiobooks provide students with equitable access to literature by overcoming barriers in the voice, content, timing, place, and condition in which students are able to engage with their reading. Students can read anytime, anywhere, anyhow!
2. Exposure to Knowledge: Students that struggle to read are often left out of the power to have productive conversations and ideas on unfamiliar topics because they lack abilities to access that knowledge. Students can empower themselves by being a knowledgeable voice at any table.
3. Accurate Assessment of Lesson: During most assessments in ELA classrooms, lessons are assessed on not only skills taught to analyze texts and state-mandated standards, but also on student’s ability to read and comprehend various forms of grade level texts.  Students can show mastery of a lesson objective even if they aren’t quite reading at grade-level yet.
4. Modeling of Exemplar Reader: Audiobooks allow all readers to listen to voices that are clearly spoken, fluent, animated, professional readers that use expression, appropriate intonations, and play with rhythm and speed depending on the context.  Students can listen to professional readers who use techniques to engage and maintain interest all while modeling what a masterful reader of that text sounds like.

Ways to proactively incorporate audiobooks into current and future lesson plans:

• Determine when either you or students will be reading within the lesson
• If the reading is a class-wide text, find titles that have audiobook option available
• In class, provide students the option to listen to the text as they follow along
• In collaborative groups, include audiobook with time stamps to unpack the reading
• During independent reading, encourage audiobook option on reading log 
• During any component in the lesson requiring you to read aloud to students, use audiobook clips while modeling how you embrace this method of reading for your own use

Things to consider:

• Your mindset matters.  If you believe audiobooks are a powerful tool for student empowerment, students will be more likely to include audiobooks as a part of their reading repertoire
• When rolling out audiobooks, take time to teach how to search, find, and add audiobooks to the bookshelf, as well as how to navigate and use audiobook toolbar
• While assessing effectiveness of lesson, embed audiobook sections for students to show mastery of standard, not just reading ability
• Allow students time to reflect on their audiobook often and embed time within your schedule to review those reflections to check for comprehension of textual content and ensure the text is appropriate for the reader