Whats the Alternative to Round-Robin Reading?
In this article in Middle Ground, University of Texas/San Antonio professor Janis Harmon and University of North Carolina/Charlotte professor Karen Wood criticize round-robin reading (the teacher calls on students to take turns reading orally without advance preparation) and popcorn reading (students read aloud and each reader gets to choose who goes next). What’s wrong with these time-honored practices? Many students find the format boring; less material is covered because the pace is so slow; many students don’t follow along with the reader; students who are not fluent readers dread being called on, which distracts them from the meaning of the text; reluctant readers suffer from embarrassment when they read poorly; and in popcorn reading, there’s a tendency for each reader to call on his or her friends to read next, which narrows the circle of students who get to read. Despite these well-documented problems, round-robin reading is common in many classrooms. Why? Because many teachers
