Singing our Way into Fluency- Bringing Magic and Motivation back into Reading: By Dr. Sam Bommarito
In the past few months, I’ve been talking with a group of educators interested in the how and why of using music to promote better reading. The group is the brainchild of Ann Kay, an educator who has been very interested and very successful in doing just that. More about that in a minute.
Let’s talk first about Dr. Tim Rasinski, a group member whose work in using repeated reading to promote fluency has been foundational to endeavors like this. It’s been over six years since I used this blog to report on the ideas of Tim Rasinski. Tim made a presentation for our local ILA group. During the presentation, he suggested that reading was both Art and Science. The presentation predates his book of the same name. Looking back over my notes about that presentation gave me great insights into the thinking that went into his book and his large body of work around how repeated reading can provide readers of all ages a path to fluency and understanding.
LINK to this blog.
It was at this presentation I first heard Tim explain his research about the power of repeated reading. Here is a key outtake from my notes about his presentation:
The important takeaway is that repeated reading impacts go beyond simple drills and practice. As you can see from his chart, the starting point for each of the subsequent rereads goes up each time. That means the student’s reading fluency is improving, and that improvement is sticking over time. Here is a link to the extensive body of scholarly research Tim has done on the topic of repeated readings. LINK.
Fast forward to more recent times. Tim’s work caught the attention of some educators in England. Please have a look at this interview I did with Penny Slater and Kathy Roe about the work they are doing in England, work that is heavily influenced by Tim’s ideas- LINK:
Here are some highlights from that interview:
Here is a link to some of the results from the project LINK. That project involved hundreds of children. The key results are pictured below:
These results relate to the topic of using singing to improve reading. HFL work demonstrates that directly TEACHING fluency skills (e.g., modeling expert prosody and echo reading) can result in improved reading. This makes developing fluency skills a cause, not an effect of repeated reading. I’ll repeat that point: This means developing fluency skills can become a cause, not just an effect.
That brings us to Ann Kay, who has been trying to get various literacy leaders together to “Zap the Gap” and use music to accomplish that. Here is an interview I did with Ann about her work. Her work is grounded in the brain research of Dr. Nina Krauss (and yes, there is brain research demonstrating that music can be used to improve fluency and comprehension in children of all ages). Please have a look at this interview I did with Ann and Dr. Nina Krauss:
Please review 09:50 on the video, which discusses how the ability to keep a beat and rhythm is related to reading achievement. For details about this concept, please have a look at Dr. Kraus’s book—LINK.
The final piece of this overview of the group’s thinking so far is the idea that Motivation Matters. No one has done a better job of using music and performance to motivate readers than Eric Litwin. I’ve interviewed him several times about that, LINK, LINK, LINK. He has written a professional development book entitled The Power of Joyful Reading. Here is a blog entry around that book. LINK.
Here are some additional blogs about what Eric had to say at the 2022 Young Years conference held in Missouri: LINK, LINK. Below is a screen capture of an acronym Eric created that provides ideas about optimizing young readers’ immersion into Early Literacy.
What do we hope will come of all this? Right now, this group is discussing the possibility of writing one or more professional articles, bringing together all the ideas around how music and reading to perform can be used to “Zap the Gap” in reading achievement. When that article is completed, I hope it can be used as a springboard for a webinar on this topic.
In the meantime, I’m providing you with a list of ideas of things you could try out this fall:
- For the younger students, use repeated readings and performances of classic fairy tales and children’s songs, including holiday songs.
Eric and Tim both have resources on their sites that could be used for that purpose. See Eric’s book If You’re Groovy and You Know It for his adaptation of a traditional children’s song. Here is a link to a YouTube version of that song: LINK. Tim has many resources on his website. Here is a direct link to the many songs that are included on his site: LINK. The screenshot below lists some of the FREE materials available on his site.
- For both younger and older readers, consider carrying out reader’s theatre activities. Reader’s theatre provides a way to give students an authentic reason to practice and reread. Students (including older students) love to perform using reader’s theatre scripts. Tim’s site has those (see the above screen capture). In addition, Dr. Chase Young, his co-author of the book Artfully Teaching the Science of Reading, has created one of the most extensive collections of free reader’s theatre scripts I know of LINK. Many of these scripts were created by students and teachers who submitted them to the site. Having your class create readers’ theatre scripts about favorite books and songs is one way to get reading material they want to read to perform. This is true for both younger and older students. Reading to perform is one of the most effective ways to motivate students to get the fluency practice they need. The screen capture below is from Dr. Chase Young’s site. It gives an idea of just how extensive his FREE collection is. My favorite script from his collection is the one for Pete the Cat.
- Make reading to perform part of your regular classroom routines. In his Megabook of Fluency (co-authored with Mellisa Cheesman Smith), Tim explains the nuts and bolts of how to do that. For teachers of older students, Tim includes passages from famous speeches e.g., the I Have a Dream Speech. LINK
- Jeremy Spartz is also a member of this group. Here is a blog post I did about his Lyric2Learn program. LINK. After listening to the interview, you might want to visit his website. I plan to use his website with some of my students in the fall. This is a paid website, but Jeremy does allow a free preview of the site, so you can try it out before using it.
David Harrison recently announced that a link Is now available for The Fluency Development Lesson: Closing the Reading Gap, a new book he co-authored with Tim Rasinski and Lynn Kulick LINK; LINK. I hope to contact those authors soon to tell you more about what they had to say about the nuts and bolts of how to construct reading lessons based on reading to perform. I’m also “back in the saddle” and trying to arrange new interviews for this summer.
In sum, reading (or singing) to perform can be a powerful tool for developing fluency. It provides an authentic reason for doing repeated reading that effectively develops reading fluency. You can make the effect even stronger by using HFL’s model of using direct instruction about fluency strategies in order to scaffold readers into reading more challenging text. Tim has called fluency the bridge to comprehension. Learning effective, research-based ways to help students cross that bridge is one way to “Zap the Gap” and bring magic and motivation back into reading.
So until next week, Happy Reading and Writing
Dr. Sam Bommarito (aka, the guy in the center taking flak from all sides)
Copyright 2024 by Dr. Sam Bommarito. Views/interpretations expressed here are solely this author’s views and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other person or organization.
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