Instructional Practices That Need to Disappear (Round-robin Reading)

by John R. Walkup, Ph.D.

I have always cautioned against buying into any argument that purports to demonstrate that one teaching method is better than another. In my view, good instruction blends a wide range of instructional methods, each strategically chosen by the teacher.

In a recent blog post, I outlined how the Cognitive Process Domain of Bloom's Taxonomy can guide teachers toward selection of effective strategies, whether these strategies be traditional teacher-centered or more progressive student-centered approaches.

On the other hand, some instructional practices are so devoid of benefit that one can comfortably condemn them outright. One of the worst practices happens to be one of the oldest: Round-robin reading.

Round-robin Reading

Round-robin reading entails a student reading a passage out loud while the rest of the students eagerly (ha!) follow along, waiting their turn. Typically, students read passages monotonically, carefully sounding each word phonetically. In round-robin reading, students treat reading like a computer treats data input: Each word is parsed one by one, with little or no emphasis placed on context. I have heard students completely mispronounce homographs because they comprehended too little about the passage they were reading.

While the rest of the students appear to read along, few do. Most move their fingers along with the text. They're not actually reading; they're marking the spot in the passage so they will know where to begin once their time to read arrives.

The Depth of Knowledge of round-robin reading is DOK-1 at best, perhaps even DOK-0, (i.e., noncognitive). This means there is essentially no cognitive challenge involved in round-robin reading. If Anderson and Krathwohl had bothered to create a level below remember for the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, round-robin reading would likely peg it.

The humiliation that round-robin reading can impose on struggling readers is severe. More than any subject, reading is perceived by the public as a signature of intelligence (a completely unfair notion, but one that persists nonetheless.) Quite possibly nothing can humiliate a struggling learner than to shine the spotlight on his or her reading skills in a whole-class setting.

Opitz and Rasinski, in their book Goodbye Round-Robin Reading, list the following reasons to dropkick this practice:

1.  Gives a false idea of what oral reading sounds like
2.  Encourages listening while tracking (following along in a text)
3.  Almost guarantees off-task reading and listening behaviors
4.  Forces children to make their reading struggle public
5.  Makes oral reading more important than understanding
6.  Emphasizes “getting the words right” over meaning
7.  Encourages sub-vocalization (moving the lips)
8.  Can ultimately transfer to a slower silent reading rate
9.  Discourages the use of good reading miscues
10.  Tends to focus on low level feedback (correcting words)
11.  Wastes valuable time that could be used in other ways
12.  Risks committing the ultimate sin of embarrassing students

Kim Yaris in her Literacy Builders blog adds a few more:

1. It slows down reading rates.
2. It lowers the quantity of reading students do. (Research estimates that students actually read between two to six minutes in a typical round robin reading session. Any way you slice it, it’s not much.)
3. It is ineffectual at improving reading comprehension. When reading aloud, pronunciation is emphasized over meaning. In turn, text is often read slowly and disfluently which interferes with meaning making.
4. It is detrimental to fluency because children are often asked to read texts that are too difficult which leads to choppy models of what reading sounds like.
5. It highlights the displeasures of reading leaving children feeling disinclined to pick up books and read on their own.

So why do we still see round-robin reading? One reason is that this practice does not require any instructional skill. Nor does round-robing reading require subject knowledge. If asked to take control of a graduate course on the philosophy of Hegel, I would be tempted to employ round-robin reading myself.

Round-robin reading is also easy on teachers. Because students can be called on at any time to pick up the reading, round-robin reading compels them to settle down and avoid disrupting the classroom. Some of the most obedient classrooms I have visited employed round-robin reading. Too bad the students didn't learn anything.

Numerous alternatives to round-robin reading have appeared on the Web. Karen Haag has compiled a nice collection of alternatives and I suggest teachers give her suggestions a perusal.

I would also suggest to any teacher still wanting to perform round-robin reading to minimize the damage by employing, at minimum, the following features:

• Stop the reading often and ask questions that target at least the understand-level of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. For example, "Describe in your own words what has taken place so far in this paragraph."
• Frontload the more difficult vocabulary words so that struggling readers have at least a chance of pronouncing the words correctly.
• Keep the passages assigned to each student short, especially for those students known to be struggling readers.

In my next installment on the subject of ineffective teaching practices, I will take aim at at another instructional baddie, Trial by Fire. Stay tuned.

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Seeking training at your school or district centered on Cognitive Rigor or Depth of Knowledge?  Call me at (559) 903-4014 or email me at jwalkup@standardsco.com. 

We will discuss ways in which I can help your teachers boost student engagement and deep thinking in their classrooms. I offer workshops, follow-up classroom observation/coaching, and curriculum analysis to anywhere in the country (and even internationally).