Garageband for Fluency

Last week, I watched a video to show how to improve fluency in the classroom by using Garage Band.

Here is the link: http://edtap.psu.edu/video/reading/

The instructional approach to record the student reading in order to improve fluency was an excellent approach to incorporate technology to assist with reading. The student could read in her own time and assess how fluent she was. The student and teacher reflected together when the story was finished, so the student could set her own goals and self assess. One thing I learned was technology can really help students become motivated! This specific lesson was very student centered. The student and teacher could work together to decide what goals could be achieved through this lesson; the teacher used content area here. The student reflected on goals and decided to use punctuation with more reflection (using tone more), increase the speed of speech and use more expression. This helped the student take her own learning into consideration to improve.


I currently read the article, Implementing Readers Theatre as an Approach to Classroom Fluency Instruction, by Chase Young and Timothy Rasinski (2009). These authors support this strategy of using Readers' Theater to increase prosody in the classroom. A study was complete to show the correlation between using the instructional approach of Readers Theater to positively affect prosody when reading in the classroom. Young and Rasinski (2009) explain, "Readers Theatre had a profound positive effect on all readers and gave an opportunity for struggling readers to read fearlessly in the limelight... performance reflected proficient reading that was adequately paced, prosodic, confident, accurate, and filled with meaning and enthusiasm. Every performance day, the struggling readers were in step and were virtually indiscernible from the rest of the class" (Young and Rasinski, 2009,  p. 12).  There were such profound effects by using Reader's Theater because students were using metacognitive strategies to improve fluency while reading. The student's were more aware of reading fluently because they were aware that others were listening.

The standard that correlates with this lesson is the standard CCSS.ELA.RF.1.4: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
a. Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.
b. Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression on successive readings. c. Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

I would definitely use the instructional approach of Reader's Theater in the classroom in the same way to help my students improve fluency. Reader's Theater has proved to be an effective instructional approach. Using the same type instruction, except with Garageband instead of reading to the class, will be something to help student's fluency in the future. While I currently teach Kindergarten, I have some students will benefit from reading at a first grade level, focusing on fluency.

References:

Young, C. and Rasinski, T. (2009), Implementing Readers Theatre as an Approach to  Classroom                     Fluency Instruction. The Reading Teacher, 63: 4-13. doi:10.1598/RT.63.1.1