Sing out those words! Choral Reading and a Book Recommendation

I'm back to college after all these years, taking courses towards ESL certification.  I was getting the textbook for my English Grammar class and another book for a different course caught my eye.   It was called Goodbye Round Robin by Michael Opitz and Timothy Rasinski.  I stood in the bookstore browsing the book and then ordered the book for myself.  

Most teachers know that "round-robin reading" is the old tradition of going around the class with the students taking turns reading.  This book explains why this technique is not the best, both in terms of classroom efficiency and student learning and self-concept.  It highlights more than a half-dozen strategies to replace the practice.

One of the strategies is choral reading.  The book recommends poetry as an ideal text.  The teacher reads the text through and then the class reads it in chorus several times.  Students can then pair off and read the text again to each other.  I have used this technique in my German class very successfully.  I usually do a poem at the beginning of class, repeating the same text over two weeks before changing to a new one.  I think that the class benefits in a number of ways:

• Students get to practice pronunciation without the pressure of performing solo.
• Students get familiar with a piece of poetry-- Many students committed the poems to memory just by the daily reading. Some poems I revisit several years in a row. I have seen former students who could still say the poem years after and took pleasure in reciting it for me.
• Students pick up new vocabulary from the poem.  Sometimes I will go to introduce a new word and students will say something like,"No, we had that word in the poem about the baked apples."  Even if they don't remember it, it is preliminary contact with new vocabulary and structures.
• The choral reading brings students mentally into the class. It signals the beginning of class.  I start the reading right when the bell rings.  Students who may be getting out books and sitting down can do it while reciting the poem.  At the end, we swing into class.

The best poems, I find, are pretty short.  Even though I teach high school, we often use children's rhymes to start. Sometimes I will make up some hand-motions to go with the poem-- this injects a tiny bit of TPR as well.  I do sometimes feel like the conductor of an orchestra-- I use a similar motion to get all of the students to start on time.  We do sometimes progress to singing as well-- but that's a post for another time!