Synchronous paired oral reading involves a competent reader reading the same text out loud at the same time. In their article, Downs and Mohr (2025) provide an overview of the strategy and the supporting research.
For struggling readers, meeting the reading requirements, especially subject area specific texts, can be daunting and difficult. Research dating back 60 years indicates that synchronous paired oral reading provides an effective strategy for scaffolding these students while simultaneously leading to improvements in fluency and comprehension.
Four major approaches:
- Neurologic impress method whereby the more competent reader whisper reads into the ear of struggling readers at a slightly faster pace than their normal rate.
- Paired reading in which the reading alternates between synchronous reading and a system whereby struggling readers indicate when they need help with a head nod or a finger tap and/or the competent reader steps in when errors are made.
- Dyad reading in which same-aged peers chorally read the text.
- Read two impress which involves choral reading in conjunction with the struggling reader orally rereading portions of the text independently.
Key points:
- Designed to support students who need to improve reading rate, accuracy and prosody.
- The more competent readers can be an adult, cross-age partner or classroom peer (obviously taking into account any social issues that arise as a result of working with a peer).
- As a strategy for practising reading, sessions should be no longer than 15-20 minutes in duration, ideally 3 or 4 times a week.
- Any appropriate text can be used, but the researchers recommend using texts being used in the classroom or to choose from a collection curated by the teacher to ensure the texts are at an appropriate level of complexity and interest. It is recommended that the texts should be around 2 years above the struggling student’s current reading level.
- Training should be provided to ensure the competent reader is able to match the struggling student’s reading speed, but a syllable or two faster.
- The strategy can be used in conjunction with repeated reading with the text initially being read using the synchronous paired reading strategy followed by the student rereading the text until accuracy and time goals are met.
- The strategy can be a useful tool for building reading stamina and to promote persistence in struggling readers.
Issues to consider if using competent peers:
- Fluency and comprehension of ‘competent’ peers are not likely to improve.
- ‘Competent’ peers may feel frustrated at having to read at a slower pace or read aloud when they would prefer to read silently.
- ‘Competent’ peers may not enjoy working with a peer,
- Reassign ‘competent’ peers regularly.
- ‘Competent’ peers need to be explicitly taught the strategy for it to be effective.
- It may be beneficial to introduce key words that are central to understanding the text first.
- Students could be encourage to make a collection of ‘crazy words’ (i.e., challenging vocabulary) encountered while reading and these can then be addressed in subsequent vocabulary instruction.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This type of reading strategy should NOT be done in isolation. You also need to be systematically and explicitly addressing underlying areas of weakness such as poor phonological awareness, poor phonic knowledge and poor orthographic knowledge.
Reference
Downs, J., & Mohr, K. (2025). Synchronous paired oral reading techniques: Supporting developing readers in connected text. The Reading Teacher. 78, 439-447.