Recording Reading Fluency

As part of our reading curriculum, students practice reading poems out loud as a class or in pairs.  The teacher can monitor and make suggestions to the students on how to increase their fluency.  An improvement on this process is allowing the students to hear themselves read the poems.  This is possible by using a laptop, iPad, or other device to record them.  Some technologies make this easier than others even to the point of students doing it themselves.  Another way to use this technology is to record individual students at various times throughout the year in order to keep track of their progress.  Here are a few ways to record your students using software, websites, and apps:

Software

Audacity: A free download that is compatible with Windows, Mac, or Unix/Linux. Upon opening the program it is easy to record; just hit the red record button when you are ready.  The finished audio recordings can be saved as Audacity files or exported as audio files that will play on any computer.

GarageBand: A Mac based program.  It is likely that this program came with your Apple computer, if not it can be purchased for $4.99 in the Mac App Store.  Apple’s website provides tutorials such as a video on how to Record Your Voice. The finished audio recordings can be saved as GarageBand files or, if you click on Share in the upper menu, they can be exported as audio files that will play on any computer. 

Websites

Vocaroo: The simplest website around! Just “Click to Record.”  The resulting file can be emailed, posted to a website using the given html code, or downloaded as a .wav file that can be played on any computer.

Soundation: Without registering, audio recordings can be created and saved to your computer. The recordings can also be edited using this site.

iPad Apps

iTalk Recorder: Just hit the big red record button to get started.  The recordings can be removed from the device via email.  If you are not exporting the files, make sure to keep track of which iPad the students record on. (Free)

iTalk Recorder Premium: The same as above, but files can be also synced to Dropbox.  Furthermore, existing files can have additional audio added to them after they are created. ($1.99)

GarageBand: This works similarly to the Mac version mentioned above. ($4.99)