An interesting thing happened to me this week: in terms of choral reading. I was teaching my preschool class about vehicles and picked a poem to use. I choose one that I thought was engaging; however, when I read it to the class they seemed uninterested. Afterwards, my teacher told me that I should always use poems that are lyrical or put them to a tune/rhythm – especially when working young children (I have 3-5 year olds in my class). This reminded me of choral reading. The children would have been much more successful in repeating and understanding the poem if it was read in a sing-song way.
I had a similar thought as Olivia: how it would be important to make sure meaning and comprehension is achieved co-currently with choral reading. And I appreciated that Becky addressed the question J
Lastly, I thought Melanie brought up a good point and something I haven’t thought about before. I often hear the students read aloud in my class and they read the punctuation incorrectly (probably because many of them are focused on reading the words correctly.) Personally, I am still rocky with punctuation skills; I took an English class in high school that taught me a lot about punctuation but I am always learning new grammar rules. I think that choral reading may be a good way for children to learn about punctuation, as the book or poem is read aloud. Also, when it comes to poetry, the punctuation often sets the tone or mood and is integral to the poem. Thus, perhaps choral reading would be an appropriate way to teach punctuation to children in a way that is appealing and enjoyable.
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In response to Carrie...I too went through a similar situation. I was reading what I too thought would be a fun interesting book ( about a brother and sister deciding which pet they should share), yet the three students I was reading too were totally turned off by the third maybe fourth page. I never got the time to talk to my CT about the situation but your response definitely gave me another insight.
I have second grade and many of them are on different reading levels, however more times than not they love to be read to. When thinking about reading something with rhyming such as poetry I imagine it gives the students a clue of what comes next. The rhyming in a way acts as a context clue to the unfamiliar words...just a thought. I maybe way off base.
Now reading some of the insights from you all on choral reading, especially from Becky's comment I can now see the role of choral reading. I was under the impression you might read it first or in the first few times; which had me frightened. So many kids are on different paces I wouldn't want them to be intimidated if they fell behind in the reading aloud. However if they were familiar with the text first I could definitely see where it could have a place in literacy.
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