Record a Book

Sometimes, giving students a real reason for reading can be useful for having them practise until mastery is achieved. If prosody (fluency and expression) is an area of weakness, one strategy could be to have students produce a video of themselves reading a picture book.

Students can be encouraged to practise reading each page before recording. Once a page has been recorded, students can listen to the recording and determine if they could improve on their performance and if desired, rerecord. Often you need to hear a recording of yourself reading to be able to realistically ascertain if you are reading with fluency and appropriate expression.

Steps

• Student selects a picture book.
• Student reads each page and requests help with decoding unknown words.
• Student practises reading each page. Encourage the student to reread just the sentences that are causing difficulty.
• Student positions recording device so only the book title page is showing and gives an introduction. Alternatively, they could use a free app such as ClipChamp and use an e-version of the book if it is available.

• The student should listen to the recording and decide whether to rerecord or to go onto the next page.
• Record the student reading the book one page at a time with only the page or the picture on the page showing.

Posting the video

• The video could be shared on a social media site such as Instagram, Facebook or Youtube.
• However, a better option for classroom teachers might be to set up a Private YouTube channel so only other students in the class or school can view the videos.
• Alternatively, the videos can be posted on a school-based platform.
• If you post it to a social media site such as Instagram, Facebook or Youtube, if you are interested, you can let me know and I’ll do a promotion from the Cracking the ABC Code Facebook page.