Collaborative Oral Reading

Purpose: To help students build their reading fluency through oral practice.

Prep Time: 5-10 minutes

Materials: A reading text at the students' reading level.

Prep: Select and preview the reading text.

Procedure:

1. Explain to the students that you are going to have them read out loud to practice their reading fluency. Remind them that reading fluently will help them with comprehension.
2. Model the process by reading the title and then a couple sentences aloud.
3. Call on a student and have them read one, two, or three sentences out loud. They can choose how much they read.
4. When finished reading, the student should pass the turn to another student who will read one, two or three sentences out loud and then pass to another student. Encourage them to pass to someone random, not just the person to their right!
5. Continue until the entire passage has been read.

Variations: 

• If working with one student, pass the turns between you.
• With lower-level students it is often a good idea to have every other turn come back to you, i.e. you read, a student reads, you read, another student reads, etc.
• If random turn taking is too complicated, have the students go in order.

Watch a teacher doing collaborative oral reading with her ESL students.