Have you ever given your students the opportunity to record and listen to themselves read? As teachers, we frequently observe and conference with our students about their oral reading fluency. However, it can be much more meaningful for students to actually hear and evaluate themselves. Last year I started doing fluency self-evaluations as a center and was very pleased with the ownership my students began to take toward achieving their reading goals. My second graders used the free workflow app Showbie to complete their fluency self-evaluations. After practicing their passage several times, they recorded themselves reading it aloud. Once they played back their recording they filled out the rubric, along with their goals for next time, and sent it to me via Showbie. If you don’t have a class set of iPads, you may want to try one of the many free voice recording apps by doing a search in the app store. One of the best and most user-friendly apps I’ve found is Voice Recorder by Tap Media (free). Students simply press the “Record” button and then “Stop” when they are finished. Then they press the “Play” button to hear their recording. There’s even the option to save recordings in folders if you want to keep a record of your students’ progress. You can grab my rubric for free by clicking HERE or on the image below.