Children must practice words they already know in order to not only improve their understanding but to maintain their current reading level. Experts advocate that between 80%-90% of what a child reads needs to be on an easy reading level. This means that the reader should instantly know 95% of the words if a book is to be termed easy. Only when students can automatically decode most of the words can they attend to the skill of comprehension. If children are decoding words one segment at a time, then they cannot simultaneously or effectively attend to the meaning.

I was thinking back to my foreign language classes. In my four years of high school French and two years of college Spanish, I recited the "Our Father" and the "Hail Mary" in the respective languages every day before class. Recited is a generous term. Sputtered and slurred is what I really did, never assigning any meaning to any particular words. Imagine if any of my teachers had written out the prayers for us to read from each day. We would see and hear the same words over and over and it would not take very long before we were able to identify words from the two prayers in a different context.

This is the idea behind the method of repeated readings. Fortunately, first grade children love to hear and read their favorite stories again and again, and there are many natural ways I can encourage repeated readings in my classroom. I describe some of the ways I provide opportunities for my students to read familiar books below.

The first five minutes of my small group reading is spent by children reading books they have already read and know well. It serves as a warm up drill. After children have learned a story but perhaps have not yet mastered it, I will have children take turns reading the book to one another, as partner reading. During sustained silent reading, children have the opportunity to select familiar books and books that have been mastered in small group or whole group reading time. Homework books are to be read to as many people at home and as many times as people will listen.

Readers Theater is another way I provide opportunity for my children to reread favorite stories. I find a story that has dialogue and rewrite it as a play. Narrators may be added to read words in the story outside quotation marks. Children ALL want a chance to play the biggest parts and so students are more than willing to repeat the "play" to give other people a chance at playing different characters. I keep a stack of multiple "scripts" of many stories and children perform the stories during center time.