Megan Jones

February 26, 2011

Content Literacy
Goodbye Round Robin

You are asked to respond to the following questions. Feel free to use your textbook as
you reflect on the information. The point of the assignment is to know what you have
learned from this text.

1. Share in your own words the authors’ explanation of reading. Why is it

necessary to understand this? The author believed that reading is language, a
cognitive process, and a social activity. It is important to realize that reading
incorporate several different ideas to fully understand how students learn, why
students read, and how to help them to become better readers.

2. What is round robin and why is it used in many classrooms? Round robin reading
as defined in the book, “ the outmoded practice of calling on students to read
orally one after the other.” It is used in classrooms for is the easiest way to have
students read, requires little effort, preparation, and was more than likely how the
teachers themselves read when they were in school.

3. Is oral reading important? Share the reasons discussed in the text. Oral reading is
incredibly important, it is a main form of communication and helps teachers tosee
if students are using the language correctly. The text listed the following twelve
reasons to use oral reading: to whet students’ appetites for reading, to share or
perform, to help beginning readers better understand how speaking is related to
the other language arts and to their lives, to develop listening comprehension and
vocabulary, to assist students in developing numerous skills associated with
reading, to promote language learning for students whose first language is not
English, to build confidence, to further develop comprehension, to determine the
strategies used when reading, to provide a means of sharing reading progress with
self and others, to provide children with additional reading time necessary for
ongoing reading growth, and to address national reading and language arts
standards. As you can see oral reading is incredibly important, it effects several
aspects of a student’s life.

4. What are some of the problems associated with round robin reading? One
problem, that personally affected me as a student was that it was a source of
embarrassment. I am a slow reader and stumbled over words often and did not
like the pressure that reading aloud put on me. Round robin also created
problems with limiting a student’s reading development and listening
comprehension. When listening to other students read I would sometimes get
lost, fall behind, or start day dreaming. Because I was not as focused on reading
when I was younger, I believe it is because I learned incorrect reading strategies
and habits.
5. How can oral reading be used when working with struggling readers? Describe
two of the strategies shared and how you might use these in the classroom. Oral
reading is an effective tool to help children with reading problems to become
stronger in reading by providing an avenue to monitor their own reading progress
and growth as well as helping teacher to properly assess their struggling readers.
Two reading strategies that I would use to help my struggling readers would be to
do read-alouds and paired readings. I selected both of these not only because I
can use them in my 8th grade classrooms, but because I think they are tools that
are important for the rest of the students’ lives. I think using read alouds to
model how I, the teacher, read instructions and word problems will help students
to better handle word problems (for they are the most difficult for all students). I
think paired reading will be important when giving task and working on projects,
having two students work together will not only help their reading improve but
their social development as well.

6. Why is oral reading important for comprehension? Describe two strategies you
might use to develop comprehension. Comprehension is the foundation of
reading, and it can be a complex process. Oral reading is important for
comprehension because you are using a variety of strategies helping students to
connect to the text creating a deeper understanding of what is being read and
developing better comprehension of the text. Two strategies I will use to help
develop comprehension in my math classroom are the following: Rapid Retrieval
of Information (RRI) and Look for signals. I chose these two strategies because I
feel like they are the most important when it comes to solving word problems.
RRI and looking for signals are both used when students are required to read a
work problem, find the important information, know how the information is being
used, and understand what they are looking for. I really like the idea of teaching
RRI to my students. Helping students learn to find the quality information
through all the ‘mubo-jumbo’ is a great tool. The two strategies will definitely
help in solving math problems as well as to help create better comprehension
skills.

7. What are the key words to remember when using oral reading for sharing and
performance? Describe two of the strategies shared and how you might use these
in the classroom. The two key words to remember sharing and performance are
preparation and audience. Students will need time to prepare their presentations
for the appropriate audiences. Revised Radio Reading and the Poetry club are
two strategies I plan on using in the classroom. Revised Radio Reading will be
used when I need students to read out of their text, read instructions, or word
problems. It will allow for students to all practice (silently) and then for one of
them to perform for the class. In one of my observations, I had a teacher who
made their students read a word problem three times, then had a student read it
out loud, and then as a group read it sentence by sentence to discover the
important information. Poetry club will have to be altered a bit to be used in my
math classroom. Not only will I have students find and read mathematical
poems to the class but I think I would like to tap into their creativity and have
 them create their own poems, over a mathematical theory, person, or concept of
their choice.

In summary, reading orally is a very important tool to use in all classrooms. Although it
might be more difficult when using numbers, I have to remember that reading numbers
(problem sentences) is very similar to English, it’s just a different language. Helping my
students to better read their text, to develop comprehension strategies, and to no longer
fear word problems will be an every day challenge I am willing to face and teach. I
enjoyed this book because it put into perspective how important it is to not only reading
silently but to read orally. Using round robin is a practice that is used too often and can
become ineffective rather quickly. But thanks to this book I now know of 25 different
oral reading methods. I am going to have to learn to incorporate as much reading into
my math classroom as possible.