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By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
September 1997
The booklet of instructions to assemble and install a ceiling fan. The directions for completing sections of various federal income tax forms, written in IRS-speak. A passage in an article on the brain which discusses the activities of neuro-transmitters. What do these examples of prose have in common? Each are examples of writing that can be difficult to comprehend.
Most likely, we will find ourselves re-reading in an attempt to get things straight. In addition, most of us will automatically employ a strategy to help us navigate this difficult text — reading the passage out loud.
The Strategy
Silent reading is grounded in our oral language, and sometimes when our silent reading is foundering, we need to vocalize in order to assist our comprehension. The need to read aloud is a natural response when the going gets tough in a passage, and there are times in the classroom when "read-alouds" are an excellent strategy to support students as they confront material that might be challenging.
Unfortunately, one method of integrating reading aloud into the classroom — round robin oral reading — also has significant disadvantages. As students wait for their turn to tackle a passage, they may or may not pay attention to the reader. Some will find the pace too slow-moving, especially if the reader is not fluent and is laboring.
Struggling readers tend to view this task with apprehension, as they must "perform" for the entire group, thus exhibiting in public their lack of skill in oral reading.
There are, however, ways that reading aloud can be used as a successful classroom strategy:
Step 1: Model fluent oral reading by regularly reading segments of class materials to students. There are a number of opportunities for teacher read-alouds in the curriculum:
Trelease (1989) offers some guidelines for teacher read-alouds:
Step 2: Have students do read-alouds in pairs. Gaither (1997) recommends the "Say Something" strategy for paired oral reading. For example, each student works with a partner to read a passage on life during the Depression from the history textbook. One student reads aloud the first paragraph while the partner follows along and listens. When the reader finishes, the listener must "say something" about what was read. The listener could comment on interesting material, make a prediction, raise a question, identify confusing information, or relate information from the paragraph to personal background experiences or knowledge.
The partners next switch roles and continue on to the next paragraph. Unlike round robin reading, when one student reads and the entire class listens, paired reading involves half the class reading while their partners listen.
The "Say Something" strategy provides a more interactive format for classroom read-alouds and also gives students more opportunity to practice their oral reading fluency. The strategy also stimulates conversation about the passage and encourages students to make connections as they read and to work at clarifying information that is difficult or confusing.
Step 3: Preview materials to identify passages that could be modified for read-alouds by a group of students. This "Reader's Theater" strategy involves some advance preparation by the teacher and readers before the read-aloud, so that students feel comfortable reading to the rest of the class. Some passages are appropriate for a reader's theater with little editing, and a group of four to five students can take turns reading sentences. For example, a science passage on the life cycle of a moth is read by five students: Student A reads the first sentence, Student B the second, and so on through the passage.
Other text may need to be slightly reworked to fit a reader's theater format. For example, some portions of a textbook chapter on life during the Depression might be read by female voices, others by male. The language could be changed to be in first person, rather than third person ("he" and "they" become "I" and "we.") Instead of description, the passage reads more as personal narrative when delivered by the reader's theater group.
Reader's theater read-alouds do not need to be elaborate productions. But allow students sufficient time to review their lines so they can read them with polish for the entire class.
Advantages
Read-alouds can offer an important variation in the classroom routine of learning from text materials. Advantages include:
Further Resources:
Gaither, P. (1997) Caught In The Act: Strategies To Engage Readers With Informational Text. Presentation at IRA Convention, Atlanta, May. Trelease, J. (1989) The New Read-Aloud Handbook. New York: Penguin.
Posted September 8, 1997