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Round robin reading (RRR) has been a classroom staple for and an activity that in one of its many forms, such as popcorn reading. RRR鈥檚 popularity endures聽despite the evidence聽that the practice is ineffective for its stated purpose: enhancing fluency, word decoding, and comprehension. Cecile Somme makes a good point in Popcorn Reading: The Need to Encourage Reflective Practice: 鈥淧opcorn reading is one of the sure-fire ways to get kids who are already hesitant about reading to really hate reading.鈥�

Facts About Round Robin Reading

In RRR, students read orally from a common text, one child after another, while the other students follow聽along in their copies of the text. Several variations on the technique offer negligible advantages over RRR, if any. They simply differ in how the reading transition occurs:

• 听听听 Popcorn Reading: A student reads orally for a time, and then calls out 鈥減opcorn鈥� before selecting another student in class to read.
• 听听听 Combat Reading: A kid nominates a classmate to read in an聽attempt to catch the peer off task, explain聽Gwynne Ash and Melanie Kuhn in their chapter in聽.
• 听听听 Popsicle Stick Reading: Student names are written on Popsicle sticks and placed in a can. The learner whose name is drawn reads next.
• 听听听 Touch Go Reading: As described by Somme, the instructor taps a child when it鈥檚 his or her turn to read.

Of the 30-odd studies and articles I鈥檝e consumed on the subject, only one graduate research paper claimed a benefit to RRR or its variations, stating tepidly that perhaps RRR isn鈥檛 as awful as everyone says. Katherine Hilden and Jennifer Jones鈥� criticism is unmitigated: 鈥淲e know of , either in terms of their fluency or comprehension.鈥� (PDF)

Why all the harshitude? Because RRR:

• 听听听 Stigmatizes poor readers. Imagine the terror that English language learners and struggling readers face when made to read in front of an entire class.
• 听听听 Weakens comprehension. Listening to a peer orally read too slowly, too fast, or too haltingly weakens learners鈥� comprehension鈥攁 problem exacerbated by turn-taking interruptions.
• 听听听 Sabotages fluency and pronunciation. Struggling readers model poor fluency skills and pronunciation. When instructors correct errors, fluency is further compromised.

To be clear, oral reading in other formats does improve students鈥� fluency, comprehension, and word recognition, though silent or independent reading should occur far more frequently as students advance into the later grades. Fortunately, other oral reading activities offer significant advantages over RRR and its cousins. As you鈥檒l see in the list below, many of them share similar features.

11 Better Approaches

1. Choral Reading:聽The teacher and class read a passage aloud together, which minimizes struggling readers鈥櫬爌ublic exposure. In of over 100 sixth graders (PDF, 232KB), David Paige found that 16 minutes of whole-class choral reading per week enhanced decoding and fluency.

In a variation, every time the instructor omits a word during oral reading, students say the word all together.

2. Partner Reading:聽Two-person student teams alternate reading aloud, switching each time there鈥檚 a new paragraph. Or they can read each section at the same time.

3. PALS:聽Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) exercises pair strong and weak readers who .

4. Silent Reading:聽For added scaffolding, front-load silent individual reading with vocabulary instruction, a plot overview, an , or KWL+ activity.

5. Teacher Read Aloud:聽This activity, says of Adams Educational Consulting, is 鈥減erhaps one of the most effective methods for improving student fluency and comprehension, as the teacher is the expert in reading the text and models how a skilled reader reads using appropriate pacing and prosody (inflection).鈥� Playing an achieves similar results.

6. Echo Reading:聽Students echo聽back what the teacher reads, mimicking his or her pacing and inflections.

7. Shared Reading/Modeling:聽By reading aloud while students follow along in their own books, the , pausing occasionally to demonstrate comprehension strategies. (PDF, 551KB)

8. The Crazy Professor Reading Game:聽Chris Biffle鈥檚 (start watching at 1:49) is more entertaining than home movies of Blue Ivy. To bring the text to life, students...

• 听听听 Read orally with hysterical enthusiasm
• 听听听 Reread with dramatic hand gestures
• 听听听 Partner up with a super-stoked question asker and answerer
• 听听听 Play 鈥渃razy professor鈥澛燼nd 鈥渆ager student鈥� in a hyped-up overview of the text.

9. Buddy Reading:聽Kids practice orally reading a text in preparation for reading to an assigned buddy in an earlier grade.

10. Timed Repeat Readings:聽This activity can aid fluency, (PDF, 271KB). After an instructor reads (with expression) a short text selection appropriate to students鈥� reading level (90鈥�95 percent accuracy), learners read the passage silently, then again loudly, quickly, and dynamically. Another kid graphs the times and errors so that children can track their growth.

11. FORI:聽With Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI), primary students read the same section of a text many times over the course of a week. Here are the steps:

1. 听听听 The teacher reads aloud while students follow along in their books.
2. 听听听 Students echo read.
3. 听听听 Students choral read.
4. 听听听 Students partner read.
5. 听听听 The text is taken home if more practice is required, and extension activities can be integrated during the week.

I hope that the activities described above鈥攊n addition to other well-regarded strategies, like , , and 鈥攃an serve as simple replacements to round robin reading in your classroom.