One of my favorite things to do is to make connections from stories with real life situations, both with students in the classroom and with my daughter at home. It can create more self awareness, as demonstrated with my daughter in "My Mouth is a Volcano"

While an explicit model may not be necessarily needed, some sort of starting point probably would have been nice. Or perhaps his idea was that teachers should just pick up a book, read and see where it takes them from there.

There is a fourth grade teacher I worked with once who did a read aloud with his class everyday after recess and you could just tell it was the class' favorite part of the day. Normally rowdy boys would actually settle themselves and get lost in the story being told because of the enthusiasm that the teacher showed in his readings.