knowledge of choral reading, and I explained, if needed. I further described the different groups of students and encouraged the audience to guess each animal being described during the performance.
As the students read, illustrations from the book were shown to the audience to confirm or
disprove their predictions. The students read
beautifully; they stood tall and spoke out in clear, practiced voices. Each of the classrooms erupted in applause when the performance
was finished. It was amazing to see how much the students’ fluency had improved from start to finish.
Conclusion
Overall, the choral reading performance was a great experience not only for my students, but for the audiences as well. My students performed for a variety of grade levels and discussed how choral reading worked---reading together, but in two different groups. The audience was able to actively participate by making predictions throughout the performance. All students---both the performers and the audience members---learned that reading is not just about getting finished with a story quickly, but it is about reading for fun, for pleasure, and for others by getting meaning across through the choral reading performance.
References
Faver, S. (2008). Repeated reading of poetry
can enhance reading fluency. The Reading
Teacher, 62(4), 350-352.
Fields, V. M., Groth, A. L., & Spangler, L. K.
(2010). Sight words. Retrieved from http://
www.education.com/reference/article/sight-
words/
Killeen, E. B. (2014). A place for readers’
theatre. Teacher Librarian, 42(1), 59.
McCauley, J. K., & McCauley, D. S. (1992). Using
choral reading to promote language learning
for ESL students. The Reading Teacher, 45(7),
526-533.
Paige, D. D. (2011). "That sounded good!":
Using whole-class choral reading to improve
fluency. The Reading Teacher, 64(6), 435-438.
Rasinski, T. (2006). Reading fluency instruction:
Moving beyond accuracy, automaticity, and
prosody. The Reading Teacher, 59(7),
704-706.
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