Reading Fluency with iPods and GarageBand

The goal of this lesson is to develop stronger reading fluency and comprehension, and increase language acquisition skills:

Using an iPod and a voice recorder, students record themselves reading stories. The content is then cleaned up using GarageBand and redistributed to the students who use it to sound out words, hear how language is used fluidly, and gain a better understanding of the story.

Another great value of this activity is that it gives great diagnostic info to the teacher. By keeping the original recordings of the content as GarageBand files, you can have an historical snapshot of the student's reading capabilities through out the school year. It's great for measuring words per minute, words they make mistakes on, beginning, middle and end sounds, reading comp and understanding, and vocabulary.

Students will:

• Increase reading fluency level


• Increase reading comprehension and understanding of the story


• Understand music genre


• ESL students will learn how language is used in fluid way

Please click on the image above to listen to the sample.

iPod, voice recorder, GarageBand, iPhoto, internet

Core curriculum or literature books

Activity #1: This activity can be used for either individual students or groups depending on your needs. Choose a story in your core curriculum. Pass an iPod with a voice recorder attached to the first student in the group. Let each child read a paragraph of the story into the iPod before passing it on to the next individual in the group. When the story is complete, the teacher imports it into GarageBand for editing. If the students are young, the teacher can edit out the flaws (pauses, umms, etc.). If the students are older, they can edit it themselves. (Editing can be very minimal and needs only a basic understanding of GarageBand). Students then find music that represents the theme and mood of the story. (Note, they can create it themselves in GarageBand or find it through a service like Freeplay Music.) When it's done the teacher or students can burn it to one or more CDs. In the end, the class has a bank of books on tape that are all core curriculum based. The students can bring them home, share them with parents, and keep them on file for next year.

Activity #2: If you want to take this activity to the next level, you can create the file as a podcast as well (using the podcasting tools in GarageBand instead of the music composition ones). By building it as a podcast, you can enhance it with pictures from iPhoto, text, google maps, links, etc. This is a great way to expand the use of the content to help study for vocabulary and reading comprehension tests and bring larger context to the story buy adding relevant data from outside the story. (And the use of pictures and text can really help many diverse learners grasp the content at their own pace and in their own style.)

• Chaptering -- with older students, let each child take a full chapter and create their own podcast section. When they are all completed, add them all together to one big chaptered podcast

• Allow the students to rewrite the story and summarize it in their own words (boosts reading comprehension)

• Were you able to read faster or follow along better after the project was edited?


• Did you understand the story better after doing this?


• Was the choice of music appropriate for the story?


• What would you do differently?