Choral Reading

Choral reading is a common strategy predominantly used in primary classrooms, and with English Language Learners (ELL). This strategy helps students to develop oral language skills, student comprehension, and student fluency. Choral reading is best used for poems or short stories. This strategy is effective for developing expression and fluency in the students’ reading. Choral reading is also very beneficial for struggling readers, as they feel their voice can be drowned out amongst the other students. There are a few ways to best execute choral reading. It can be done as a whole class activity with all students reading together or all together with specific students reading small portions of the book or poem. Another method is to have students in small groups responsible for a section of the story or poem. Four arrangements to have students do this suggested in “50 Literary Strategies” are echo reading, leader and chorus reading, small-group reading, and cumulative reading. These will be discussed further in the video to follow. They key element of choral reading is repetition. Students will rehearse the words they are reading many times during the reading, or in practice to read aloud to the class.