Why Round Robin and Reading Popcorn Are Bad

Every day, in thousands of classrooms, students are asked to read aloud. Some teachers use the free-for-all style, in which each student takes turns reading a section. Other teachers use the popcorn style, in which students invite each other to read. For many teachers, these strategies are the primary means of working through a reading text with students.

Teachers say that having students read aloud is important practice for fluency and decoding. Teachers argue that this strategy holds students accountable for reading along with the class, as opposed to reading silently. Reading aloud increases comprehension because listening comprehension is generally at a higher level than reading comprehension silently. It also helps the teacher to formatively assess students’ pronunciation, attention to punctuation, and inflection. Students love to read aloud and would rather hear a story aloud than have to read the story silently and independently. Getting students to read aloud is as American as apple pie.

But, upon further analysis, free-for-all styles and popcorn are not effective means of instruction. Instead, having students read aloud can backfire.

First of all, having one child read aloud at a time is not good fluency practice. Effective fluency practice is leveled according to the instructional level of the student. The Read Naturally® fluency program uses a brief oral assessment to assess each student’s level of fluency. The class novel or textbook may or may not be up to the instructional level for most of your students.

Good fluency practice uses modeled selections. The students are not the best model readers in the class. Poor reader students reinforce poor reading skills such as inattention to punctuation, poor pronunciation, and poor inflection. The more the teacher interrupts to correct student mistakes, the less fluency is practiced.

Good fluency practice requires lots of reading aloud, including repeated reading. In any given reading, an individual student may read once or twice for a total of, say, one minute. Sparse practice to improve fluency.

The round robin and popcorn practice is bad decoding practice. Class novels and textbooks are not decodable texts. Real literature is full of sight words. In addition, students present different deficiencies in diagnostic decoding. Correcting a student’s mispronunciation of /ch/ in chorus can only address the needs of one or two students. And correction is not an effective practice. Students need multiple examples, not isolated corrections, to improve decoding. The fix also doesn’t improve syllabication skills.

Having students read aloud decreases reading comprehension. Jumping from one student to the next interrupts the flow of the selection. Reading comprehension depends on the connection of ideas. Imagine watching a twenty-two minute episode of The office with thirty different five-second commercials interrupting the show. Comprehension would obviously diminish. In the round robin, students often anticipate where they will start and practice in silence, thus losing comprehension.

Not all students enjoy reading aloud. For some, this activity is the most dreaded classroom activity. Poor readers lose self-esteem when asked to read aloud. Companions can be ruthless and cruel. Too often, teachers use rotating turn-taking or popcorn styles to “catch” inattentive students, which further disrupts fluency and comprehension and only serves to put students down.

Instead of popcorn and rotary turn styles, why not use strategies that are appropriate to the teacher’s instructional goals? For fluency development, use a differentiated fluency plan with diagnostically assessed leveled selections with teacher read-alouds or modeled stories on CD and repeated practice. Or at least use choral readings or echo readings to provide some model. For decoding practice, use phonics worksheets assigned according to students’ assessed diagnostic needs. For reading comprehension, use specific guided reading comprehension strategies with the best model reader, the teacher, as a coach. For the formative reading assessment, protect student self-concept and assessment accuracy by reading one-on-one periodically.