Oral reading. As a kid, did you dread it? Are your eyes glazing over even now as you remember hearing your classmates’ voices droning or stumbling through a paragraph from your basal reader? No doubt, many of you share memories of such boredom. I surely do. But, fortunately, I also remember how my sixth grade teacher introduced the idea that oral reading should entertain and enlighten the audience --- not put it to sleep.

 

     Mrs. Oliver first encouraged us to select something likely to capture our classmates’ attention. We scoured through Reader’s Digests, newspapers, and short stories. It became a badge of honor to find the most entertaining selection to present. Of course, Mrs. Oliver demonstrated how to engage the audience with appropriate pacing and expression. We learned quickly that preparation was the key to success. Anyone trying to wing it with a cold reading risked not only a poor grade but also an even harsher fate --- yawns from classmates.      

We were given the option of reading an entire short article or story or summarizing a longer one and reading a passage or two orally.

Since 55 years have passed since I was in sixth grade, I cannot accurately recall how long the presentations lasted. I’ll venture a guess at from five to ten minutes.

 

     When I borrowed Mrs. Oliver’s oral reading plan for my own middle school reading classes, I adapted it to the times. A conversation about appropriate topics and language was, of course, an important preface to avoid controversy. Students enjoyed browsing through short story collections, magazines, and newspapers I’d brought to class. Sometimes entire reading periods were devoted to looking through the materials. Students also had the option of bringing in their own pieces for oral reading. Yes, indeed, they had to show them to me first.

 

     Here’s the management technique that ensured a smoothly running program. Each student wrote his or her name on an index card and placed it in a basket. In another basket were index cards on which I had written the dates for the oral reading presentations. Without looking at the cards, students selected a name card from one basket and a date card from the other. As the names and dates were announced, students signed up on the large calendar posted on a bulletin board.

 

     The following stories were especially popular with sixth through eighth graders: “The Great Mouse Plot” (Roald Dahl’s Boy: Tales of a Childhood), “The Boy Who Talked to Animals”, and “The Swan” (Roald Dahl’s The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar and Six More).  From The Stories of Ray Bradbury, these were perennial favorites:

            “The Lake”

            “Mars is Heaven”

            “Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed”

            “A Story of Love”

            “The October Game”

            “The Veldt”

     Recently I read an article in the newspaper about a product called Fizzy Fruit, a carbonated, unsweetened fruit drink. The company hopes Fizzy Fruit’s secret process of bubbles will “tickle kids’ appetites for fruit.” As I was reading, I thought about how Mrs. Oliver would have loved hearing one of us read this article to the class!