Recently, Hal W. Lanse, Ph.D, author of Read Well, Think Well: Build your Child’s Reading, Comprehension and Critical Thinking Skills, wrote a blog post titled, Round Robin Reading, The Worst Reading Strategy in the World.  Lanse’s blog post has gotten much attention as I recently listened to my peers as they related that Round Robin is now shunned as a strategy.  I get that Round Robin Reading is a bad strategy but I want to make sure that we make the distinction between Round Robin Reading and Round Robin related cooperative learning structures.

According to Lanse one of the worst reading strategies in the world and one of the most common is round robin reading.  Basically the strategy works like this: the class will open a book and the teacher will ask a student to read aloud. Invariably the student will read a page, stumbling over many words as the teacher supplies the correct pronunciation, which further embarrasses the student and makes him or her want to crawl into a hole.  The rest of the class is bored silly and or is diligently reading ahead so they don’t look foolish when it comes time for them to read.  My daughter often comes home from school complaining about her teachers’ frequent use of this strategy, relating that audible groans can be heard from the hallways as her peers are forced to endure this practice.  And worse yet, having ELL students read while the teacher provides constant corrections of pronunciation is totally counterproductive.

But, let’s not confuse Round Robin Reading with Round Robin Brainstorming and other Kagan Cooperative Learning related Round Robin structures.  In a Round Robin Brainstorming structure the class is typically is divided into small groups (4 to 6) with one person appointed as the recorder. A question is posed with many answers and students are given time to think about answers. After the “think time,” members of the team share responses with one another round robin style. The recorder writes down the answers of the group members. The person next to the recorder starts and each person in the group, in order, gives an answer until time is called.  Round Robin, in general, means that each person in a small group is given time to process and think about content, write about it, talk about it with his or her peers, listen to his or her peers talk it through, provide each other feedback on their thinking, and create new knowledge from the experience.  In my book (or blog) this strategy is really hard to knock.

If, however, you are looking for specific productive reading strategies, Lanse suggests the following:

GUIDED READING: Teachers and peers model comprehension strategies by giving a child a book to read and then assessing how well he/she is using the strategy. Predicting is one such strategy. Adults can use a model reading passage to demonstrate how they use characters’ words and actions to predict what will happen later in the story.

SHARED READING: The teacher reads aloud as students follow in their own texts. Periodically, the teacher “thinks aloud” how he/she interprets the text. For example, the teacher can demonstrate how to interpret a characters’ feelings by saying, “The hero said (fill in the blank) or did the following (fill in the blank) so know I know he must be feeling (fill in the blank).” Later, young readers can try the same type of comprehension strategy in texts of their own.

ECHO READING: The teacher reads a short passage, demonstrating how he/she uses punctuation marks as cues to modulate his voice. Students then build their fluency skills by reading aloud the same passage.

As always, thanks for reading, and I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.  C