Friday we read chapters two and three of The House of Dies Drear. Although I had a lot of great ideas given to me from the last post, I decided to stay the course. The students really had no time to do much of anything other than sit down and read, the timing was very tight.
One thing I did change seemed to make a real difference though. My second class, after the trip down the hallway and getting prepared to read didn't have enough time to finish the third chapter. They were about five minutes short of finishing. Because I was using my iPhone with the Audible app to play the book aloud, I used a handy tweak to the reading. The app allows for books to be sped up so I chose for it to read the story at 1.5 times the normal speed. Fortunately it doesn't make the reader sound like The Chipmunks :)
Interestingly enough it seems that by speeding up the reading of the story, the students were better able to maintain their attention. I guess that since they weren't having to decode the words as they read, they could follow along faster than they normally would if they were reading it themselves. Whatever the reason, I was pleasantly surprised by how they reacted. I think we are through the slowest parts of the book and am looking forward to seeing how they continue to respond to reading the story.
That doesn't mean I won't keep the advice in mind, there is still a about two weeks worth of reading ahead.
One thing I did change seemed to make a real difference though. My second class, after the trip down the hallway and getting prepared to read didn't have enough time to finish the third chapter. They were about five minutes short of finishing. Because I was using my iPhone with the Audible app to play the book aloud, I used a handy tweak to the reading. The app allows for books to be sped up so I chose for it to read the story at 1.5 times the normal speed. Fortunately it doesn't make the reader sound like The Chipmunks :)
Interestingly enough it seems that by speeding up the reading of the story, the students were better able to maintain their attention. I guess that since they weren't having to decode the words as they read, they could follow along faster than they normally would if they were reading it themselves. Whatever the reason, I was pleasantly surprised by how they reacted. I think we are through the slowest parts of the book and am looking forward to seeing how they continue to respond to reading the story.
That doesn't mean I won't keep the advice in mind, there is still a about two weeks worth of reading ahead.
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