Choral reading Roda S. Galiya II-6 BEEd

What is choral Reading? Choral reading is reading aloud in unison with a whole class or group of students. Choral reading helps build students' fluency, self-confidence, and motivation. Because students are reading aloud together, students who may ordinarily feel self-conscious or nervous about reading aloud have built-in support.

Choral reading is simply reading in unison under the direction of a leader. Choral reading offers genuine opportunity for problem solving as each group works out its own presentation. It has three major purposes: learning  performance  Enjoyment. Practicing choral reading does not necessarily mean there must be a performance. Practice has its own value whether the product is shared with others or not.

How Choral Reading Can Foster Fluency in Struggling Readers Choral reading provides support for students who may ordinarily feel self-conscious or nervous about reading aloud in class. Reading along with more fluent readers enables less proficient readers to be successful with a shared text. Choral reading may provide the support necessary to encourage struggling readers to take risks and build their confidence. When students participate in choral reading on a regular and repeated basis, students will internalize the fluent reading of the text being read and begin to transfer their developing fluency to other texts.

Benefits Choral readings offer students a creative way to explore issues of voice, characterization, rhythm, and rhyme, along with the dialects and cadences of the texts. Choral reading can also help students to recognize how poetic structures, such as line breaks and internal rhymes, shape the poem's meaning. Finally, choral reading allows students to actually "feel" the work's aesthetic, putting them in touch with their creative selves and allowing them to interpret the work with their own aesthetic sensibilities. 

Why use choral reading? It can provide less skilled readers the opportunity to practice and receive support before being required to read on their own. It provides a model for fluent reading as students listen. It helps improve the ability to read sight words.

How to use choral reading? Choose a book or passage that works well for reading aloud as a group: patterned or predictable not too long; and is at the independent reading level of most students Provide each student a copy of the text so they may follow along. (Note: You may wish to use an overhead projector or place students at a computer monitor with the text on the screen) Read the passage or story aloud and model fluent reading for the students. Ask the students to use a marker or finger to follow along with the text as they read. Reread the passage and have all students in the group read the story or passage aloud in unison.

Several types of choral speaking or reading are appropriate for classroom use: Refrain is one of the most common forms of choral speaking. One person reads the narrative portion of the text while the rest of the class joins in the refrain. Unison calls for the whole group to read the material together. Additional sound effects might be incorporated. Antiphon calls for the class to be divided into two or more groups, with each group being responsible for a certain part of the selection. Cumulative choral reading or speaking refers to a method where groups of voices or individual voices are added to or subtracted from the choral reading, depending on the message or the meaning communicated by the selection. Solo Lines is a type of choral reading where individuals read specific lines in appropriate places throughout the group activity. Line Around is more solo work where each line is taken by a different person in the group.

Types of choral reading (adapted from The Fluent Reader by Timothy Rasinski) Antiphonal -- Divide the group into groups and assign parts of the text to each group. Give students an opportunity to practice how they will read before bringing them back together to chorally read together. Dialogue -- Select a text that contains different speaking parts. Assign the part of the narrator to one group and each character to other groups. Cumulative Choral Reading -- The number of students reading gradually builds as the text is read. An individual or small group reads the first line or section of a passage, and then they are joined by another group. By the end of the passage, the whole group is reading. (This can also be done in reverse, starting with whole group and ending with just one person or group.) Impromptu Choral Reading -- As a text is read, students join in or fade out as they choose. Some students may choose to highlight certain words or sections of the text, read every other line, or the whole selection. Students choose ahead of time what section(s) of the text they will read. (If no one selects a section, someone usually jumps in!)

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