Elementary Students Prefer Extra Reading Practice Before Reading in Front of Peers
Let fourth-graders rehearse a passage privately and they will happily read it aloud better and faster.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Newell et al. (2025) asked three fourth-graders to read aloud in class. First the kids got to practice the passage alone. Then they read the same passage to the group.
The team used an alternating-treatments design. Some days the students practiced first. Other days they jumped straight to the public read-aloud. The researchers counted how often each child volunteered and how fast they read.
What they found
Every child preferred the pre-practice days. They raised their hand to read almost every time they had already rehearsed.
Their words-per-minute scores were also higher on the pre-taught passages. Private warm-ups made public reading feel safer and sound better.
How this fits with other research
Doğanay Bilgi (2020) moved the same idea home. Parents ran short fluency drills before school and saw gains on brand-new stories. Newell shows the warm-up works just as well when peers are the audience.
Aznar et al. (2005) proved that repeating a word three times after an error beats saying it once. Newell flips the timing: repeat the whole passage before any error can happen. Both studies say repetition is reading rocket fuel.
Lane et al. (1984) tucked letter drills into bedtime stories for language-delayed preschoolers. Newell tucks a solo read into the regular classroom routine for older, typical readers. Same simple trick, new age band.
Why it matters
You can cut stage fright and boost fluency in one move. Hand the student the story five minutes early. Let them whisper-read it once while the class settles. They will volunteer more and sound smoother when their turn arrives. No extra staff, no tech, no prep beyond printing one more copy.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Abstract We used a multi-element design to determine student preferences for the arrangement of a repeated reading intervention, as either preparation for (i.e., pre-teaching) or review of reading material, and how these arrangements affected their likelihood of volunteering to read during small-group sessions. Three fourth-grade students, identified by their teacher as behind in reading proficiency, participated in small-group reading sessions together. We used a concurrent chains arrangement to assess preference for repeated reading timing. During the choice phase, all three participants selected the pre-teaching condition most frequently. During small group sessions, all three participants consistently volunteered to read their practiced pre-teaching passage at almost every opportunity. For all three participants, words read correctly per minute was higher during small group for the pre-teaching passage that was practiced during the morning intervention session in comparison to other conditions and other passages in the pre-teaching condition across all phases. These findings are consistent with literacy research demonstrating that repeated reading improves oral reading fluency for practiced passages and indicate that using repeated reading as a pre-teaching strategy enhances students’ willingness to volunteer to read aloud. Additionally, these findings suggest that students prefer to practice before reading in a group setting.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2025 · doi:10.1007/s40617-025-01099-0