How students use Audacity to Self-Assess and Improve their Oral Reading Skills

• First, Audacity creates a "starting place" for students as they "see and hear" their reading first hand.  They now have a "mirror" which serves as a baseline so they can begin improvements.

• Next,  as students become engaged in creating multiple recordings, they evaluation checklists to evalutate their progress and become "active participants" in their learning.
   

Step 1:  Teach students how to record and playback and Audacity. Make sure they complete the voice check so they will be oriented already as to how they sound coming through a microphone.

Step 2:  Each student will select a passage to read aloud.   Make sure they read a short passage to start off with.  Lower elementary should read no more than a paragraph or even a sentence for kindergarten students.

Step 3: Have the students practice this passage aloud, making sure they know all the words. Tell them that they will read this same passage over and over again.

Step 4: Distribute the Oral Reading Fluency Assessment to students.  Go over the qualities of a good reader. It's also a good idea for the teacher at this point to model both poor and good reading.  Go ahead and record and play one passage several times making each one better so the students can see the difference in quality.

Explain to them that after they record their passage, they will listen to it and then evaluate how well they think they have done by just looking at the list at first.  They will cancel each session, recording again to improve their reading.

Note: If they get a recording they really like, they can press the mute button in the recording to save it in case they don't get a better session that day.

• I paused for punctuation such as commas and periods.
• I read at a consistent pace (not too fast and not too slow.)
• I sounded interesting. I read with expression and showed inflection in my voice for parts that show emotion.
• I spoke loud enough to be heard.
• I spoke clear enough to be heard.  You could understand what I was saying.

Step 5:  After students have been given plenty of time to record multiple sessions, tell them that it's time to record the "final session" that they will use to evaluate their reading.

Note:  You will be surprised that many of the students have a hard time with this last session because they keep wanting to make it better and better (which is such a good thing.) 

Step 6: Students complete the evaluation sheet, making sure to also write down their successes and areas they need to improve.

Here you see the same student recording a passage he has written and then listening to his recording.  

You can see by the pictures below how engaged he is as he takes on an "active role" to improve his reading skills.

Student listens and evaluates his reading.

This type of self-assessment allows him to take an 

active role in his own learning.