Choral Reading: Who Has the Time? Why Take Time?

Choral reading can be used by teachers to enhance children's appreciation for poetry and to develop their personal, social, psychological, cognitive/affective, and language values. It is useful for teachers to begin by creating an awareness in children of the basic elements of choral reading: tempo, rhythm, pitch, stress, and juncture. Then an arrangement of the work to be read must be made: the reading can be in unison, antiphonal, cumulative, or by single voices. In presenting a sequence of choral speaking skills, teachers might begin with repetition of sounds, then go to repeated refrains, simple unison reading, and finally to small group work. The poem must be scored so that groups and individuals will know when to speak, and it should be marked so that all agree on the emphasis. In many poems, it is possible to create a verbal obbligato to provide a background appropriate to the poem. (TJ)