How to Raise Reading Scores

          How to Raise Reading Scores

    In my thirty years plus of teaching, I found that students always learn more if they enjoy what they are studying. If students enjoy reading, their reading scores will go up. Most of my students really enjoyed reading the plays in Scholastic Scope Magazine. I made the reading of these plays a definite part of my weekly lesson plan.

   I subscribed to Scope and received the magazine once a week. There was usually a good play in every magazine. Of course, some of the plays were better than others. I always saved the better plays and by the time I quit teaching I must have had a hundred or more class sets stacked on top of my closets and piled in cardboard boxes inside the closets.

   I would begin the lesson in Scope by having all the students read the play silently. Even the more reluctant readers would read carefully because they knew that they would either have to pick a part or be assigned a part to read aloud. The lower level readers wanted to find the shorter easier parts. The higher-level readers competed for the leading roles. Those who did not get a leading role would volunteer to be narrator, which always involved a lot of reading.  I gave the slower readers lots of time to finish the play because the more advanced readers always went to articles in the magazine when they finished the play.

   Once we were finished with the silent reading I would assign parts or ask for volunteers. To make sure that everyone followed along as the parts were being read, I would switch parts to keep the eyes peeled to the page. I encouraged the students to try to act out the parts with their voices, to read with feeling. Most sixth graders really enjoy showing off and would put a lot of effort into getting into character.

 After we finished reading the play aloud, I would have students pair up in twos are threes to memorize scenes from the play that they could act out. Again, most students love doing this, and they could help each other. I often paired a slower reader with one who was more advanced. About once a month I would get a Scope that had a number of scenes with two or three characters that lasted for two or more minutes. These are the magazines that I would save for future use. Students would practice their parts together, and then perform for the whole class. The audience would offer constructive criticism. We would often perform the parts more than once to demonstrate our improvement.

   Once I began using a video camera in the classroom, our reading of the Scope plays became even more productive. Students would act out their parts in front of the camera, and be able to watch their performance on the TV screen. Sixth graders love to watch themselves on the screen. Again classmates would offer constructive criticism and go through their performance a second time. Actually seeing themselves perform almost always produced a better second performance.

   I always had a student do the filming. Both boys and girls volunteered to be cameraman. And I could use the assignment of cameraman as a positive reinforcement. Later when we began editing our films, I used students to do the editing.

   Early in my teaching experience, I found that there is a very close relationship between reading and writing. Once a class of students’ acquired experience with the Scope plays, I had them write short skits of their own modeled on the plays they had read. They would write their skits in groups of two or three. After they had edited their skits, they acted them out together. Then they would perform for the video camera, and view their performance. After the first performance they would edit their scripts again, rehearse some more, and give a third performance.

   I often would take a part in one of the skits that the students wrote and do a little showing off myself. I always tried to act in the very best way I could to set a good example. Once in a while we would do a skit involving the whole class myself included. I remember one that a very talented six-grade girl, Karen, wrote. It was called, “Are You Chewing Gum?”

   The skit began with a wide angle shot of the whole class. Most of the students were chomping on their gum, some quietly others smacking their lips. The camera then zoomed in on students one at a time. One student had a whole mouth full of gum. Another student was blowing bubbles. A third student was pulling the gum from his mouth in long strings. A fourth student was drooling all over his chin.

   The camera then focused on me at my desk correcting papers. I looked up from my work and surveyed the class. “Are you chewing gum?”  I shouted from my desk.

   The camera then goes to a girl up front. She blows a big bubble and then says, “Me chewing gum? Oh, no, I would never chew gum!!!” Next, the camera goes to the boy who is slobbering. “Me chewing gum? We’re not allowed to chew gum in school I would never break the school rules.” The camera then focused on the boy who is pulling the gum our in strings. “Are you accusing me of chewing gum? I would never chew gum. I don’t even like gum,” he tells us. Next is a wide angle shot of the whole class, blowing bubbles, chomping on their gum and smacking their lips.

    The camera then zooms in on me. “You’re not supposed to chew gum. You’re not suppose to chew gum… I shout banging my fists on the desk.

   As you might imagine this skit was very popular with my class and also with most other students at our school when we showed it on the closed circuit TV.

   You can see from my article that I enjoyed working with the plays as much as my students did. In an environment where both the teacher and the students are enjoy themselves the learning curve is bound to go way up. Reading scores definitely improve when the students enjoy what they are reading.