Personal cassette players are essential aids in helping at risk readers meet grade level demands. Listening to books on tape provides children with opportunities to increase the amount of time they hear fluent and expressive reading by others.
My students attend a high poverty school in Alabama.
We have many “at-risk” or below grade level readers, English Language Learners, and students receiving free or reduced lunches. Currently we only have a few tape players to share which forces the students to form a group in order to listen to a book. Children who struggle with reading are often too embarrassed to read in front of their peers. My students would greatly benefit from having access to a personal cassette player so that they can choose to listen to a book on tape at any time. The personal cassette player will allow students to hear books read by fluent readers and encourage them to read along with a sense of privacy. Once they feel comfortable enough to read along with the reader, confidence will be built in their own reading.
My Project
Fluency is the ability to read text easily, quickly, and with expression. Books on tape aid in developing skillful readers because they allow the child to hear fluent reading as they track the text being read. This process allows the children to notice important elements such as expressive reading, noticing punctuation marks, and emphasizing important words. Research shows a close relationship between reading comprehension and fluency. Tape-assisted reading fosters both comprehension and fluency. In accordance with the No Child Left Behind Guidelines, books on tape are a research-based option for reading practice. This will also be a beneficial tool in increasing oral reading fluency which is assessed by a state wide test. Reading along with the books on tape makes the reading of words and sentences effortless so the children can attend to what the text means. As the children gain confidence in the book being read, the tape can be removed and they will be equipped to practice fluency.
In clinical experiments, Chomsky (1976) and Carbo (1978) found that recorded readings had an overall positive on students with weak reading skills.
Additionally, Carbo (1978) found that some students intuitively picked up phonics rules without formal phonics instruction by listening to recorded readings.
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