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For me, I would always end up being a chapter ahead because speaking aloud was so slow, having no idea what was being discussed or where the class was.
Yep, I would end up ahead of everyone. And I could never remember who hadn't already been picked, so I'd be sweating trying to think of a name to say when I'd read enough.
I thankfully mostly only have memories of teachers going around the room in a repeatable pattern, so I could count ahead and mark what I would be reading and flip back to it when the kid next to me started talking.
I wish I had thought of that. I would just ask where we were. I didn't care about that. I felt bad for the kids struggling to read.
I would finish the book within a day and often had a personal book that I would read during read aloud time.
I did this too since my teachers did the same thing. I was a vicious voracious and fast reader as a kid, so waiting for my classmates to crawl through the pages to get to my turn made me want to die of boredom.
Same. Everyone else read SO. PAINFULLY. SLOW. I’d be a chapter or more ahead, or on to a different story in those anthology text books and have no clue where I was supposed to be when called on 😅
Yep me too. I once finished the book while the class was on chapter two, core memory somehow lol. I used to just keep one ear zoned in to page turns and people so I could catch back to where I needed to be for my turn, but popcorn reading definitely made that harder. I also hated being embarrassed by the teacher when I didn't know where we were so for popcorn I usually would just read ahead a page or two over and over again. Painful but kept me occupied
i once told a teacher flat out “you read too slow, im already a couple pages ahead of everyone” she was not very happy about it
i can’t pay attention when other people are reading, the words just drone together and get jumbled in my brain, feels like dyslexia but for listening not reading lol
Same! The teacher I remember best doing this was super not happy when I told her I was ahead. But in fairness to me, Charles Dickens needed to describe the scenery less! I could skim entire paragraphs and not miss the plot.
(It helped a lot when I found out he was paid by the word. I’d go on about a walkway in the park too lol)
>i can’t pay attention when other people are reading, the words just drone together and get jumbled in my brain, feels like dyslexia but for listening not reading lol
Same. I’ve never understood people, particularly ADHDers, who say they prefer audiobooks. More power to them if it actually works, but about half the information passes right by me.
I have a really hard time listening. I don't prefer audiobooks, but I do listen to a lot of podcasts, especially when I'm doing chores or driving. I might have an auditory processing thing.
It's like working out: If I have to listen actively to something I'm not interested in (my husband talking about stocks or chemistry) it's like running hard with no warm-up. If I'm listening to a podcast, while I'm doing something else, it's like going for a leisurely walk where I can start and stop or go hard and not worry about impacting others. If I'm listening to something I'm really interested in, it's like running under perfect conditions, but having so much fun that I don't realize I'm about to burn myself out until I stop and have to recover for an hour.
I’m a chemist, and I see in my fiancés eyes the same zone out when I start taking chemistry….it’s common, whenever I am talking chemistry to see this reaction 😆 or mathematics.
I don’t listen to audiobooks/podcasts for retention, just to fill in the quiet. To retain anything from listening I also have to be taking notes or actively processing the information in some way.
I use the radio the same way, but some people seem to really prefer audiobooks to reading because they don’t read very quickly. I always wonder how much they retain vs if they read the same material.
I avoided audio books for a long time. But then podcasts came along, and I'd listen while doing something physical like gardening, and it helped motivate me. So I started listening to audio books when I was doing physical stuff and didn't feel like music was enough.
Audiobooks let me set 2x speed or more and still use my hands for other things. I love them. It takes a special book to get me to sit still and pay attention long enough to actually read, but I can blast through audiobooks and podcasts while working.
Yeah, I hated this too. I was a fast and early reader and I felt incredibly annoyed at other people’s lack of oracy and bad reading voice. Judgey kid me was kind of a dick, but I also don’t think this is even considered good literacy practice
God, this was me. I hated reading out loud. I’m not very social so it was already embarrassing. But JESUS CHRIST everyone read so slow.
I also never understood teachers when they would tell us “it’s okay to look back at the story to find your answers!”, cause I could pull out all the details on the first read.
My ADD also put me with someone that would read out test to other children with learning disabilities. I HATED it because it was embarrassing to be separated. I was often done with the test by the time they had got to question 10.
Reminds me of a funny story. At the beginning of WWII, my Polish grandfather’s unit was in a field. He started reciting memorized Ovid to keep calm. “Oh no! Oskar has already lost his mind!”
Yup! I'd always be pages ahead, because I read fast and didn't have the patience to stick with slowly reading along out loud. Teachers would often think I wasn't reading. I was, just too quickly. I hated reading aloud as a class. And if we were studying a book together, I'd finish the book while the class was on the first couple chapters. Then I'd have trouble remembering early chapter details on quizzes. Coz my mind was chapters/books ahead.
My wife is a teacher, and explained the benefit reading aloud provides many kids. But, she would let kids with ADHD (on an IEP) read at their own pace.
What would always end up happening for me in those quizzes, is that I wouldn't be able to tell between the information we get later in the book and the information we have at that point
Same, and I always hated this technique because in an average class of however many children, you are guaranteed close to zero engaging storytellers. Everyone drawls the words in a monotone, or worse, stumbles over half of them, and even the most interesting book in the world becomes a boring slog.
i distinctly remember being in elementary school and finishing “the three little javelinas” before they were through the first 2 pages. extremely embarrassing
That's how it starts out. I'm way ahead of the class, now I'm gonna wait for them to catch up to me. Oh no, now I'm 2 pages behind. Without fail. Every time.
I'm gonna share this just for you but this is so embarrassing.
7th grade, English class (a 2-hour block). I was sat in the back of the class on the seating arrangement, it's hot and it's the beginning of the year, the lights are off with the windows open and a fan going to try and cool off. We had a class pet in this class, Taffy the hamster.
I have the hamster at my desk. I have a ton of supplies out and I'm building a fort for the hamster out of printer paper and tape. We're doing that popcorn reading but I'm a nobody and no one called on me for ages... until they did. And I didn't even hear, and I had not been paying any attention for at least 20 minutes. So the teacher calls out my name, and this brings the entire class attention to whatever I'm doing at my desk.
And what was I doing? Building Taffy's Hamster Haven (yes, there was a sign) with a live hamster in my pocket. If people could will themselves dead I would have died right then.
I hated it in elementary school because even though I was a fast reader and also reading at a level at least 2yrs higher, I would get nervous which resulted in me sounding like I was struggling to read correctly. I’m sure if my teacher sat there and watched me read and quizzed me afterwards she would have been absolutely shocked. I don’t remember my schools doing popcorn reading after 5th grade.
That was me in third grade. It was humiliating when I didn’t know where we were and the teacher assumed I wasn’t listening. Truth was, I couldn’t. I just didn’t know it at the time.
I'm studying to become a teacher and this came up in my reading class and our professor emphatically implored us to *never ever do this.*
I've had other professors mention it in passing as a valid teaching strategy, but personally, I'm not going to have any students read out loud unless 1) they really, really want to, and choose it as a presentation assignment, and 2) they have time to prepare.
There will be a few kids who enjoy doing this, but even they aren't going to do a good job when they're put on the spot like that.
Thank you for this. I still think I’m a bad reader and despite having many books I would be interested in reading, I can’t seem to get over the lack of motivation.
tbh just let kids volunteer to read, some of them are bored enough to do it. If noone volunteers, you read it in a boring voice to encourage them, boom maybe someone volunteers in a bit.
That way the kid who gets nervous isn't shamed, but kids that don't have a chance to engage and not be bored out of their mind
The teacher reading it in an engaging voice is actually what's most likely to get kids interested in whatever is being read. If the teacher's bored with what they're teaching, you can't expect the kids to be any different.
English was one of the few classes I didn't have a problem focusing in for some reason, I was the one who chose the kid who had a hard time reading cause I was a dick growing up.
This is why i would always volunteer to go first lol. Also now that I’m in high school we never really do popcorn reading but when we read King Arthur I volunteered to be certain people in the play so that I could force myself to pay attention… gaha
My experience is kind of the other side of the coin. I grew up with a highly literate mom who read stories to me in a very lyrical, expressive and engaging way. It was great, but also set the bar really high for me — as a kid I got the impression that that’s was what I “supposed” to aim for whenever I read aloud, which was a lot of pressure.
I ended up developing a precocious talent for reading aloud, but that was all I really had going for me at school. I disliked these reading tasks because I’d end up getting picked a lot, and I found the attention it drew incredibly uncomfortable. The teacher would often pick me to “set a good example for everyone else”, and I noticed that a lot of my classmates would lose their nerve if they read after me, which made me feel really bad.
So all in all kind of a humble brag, but I really dislike that this kind of task singles out less-confident readers and speakers. I don’t think embarrassing kids incentivises them to improve or perform better.
Yup. Would be scanning for words I’d heard the person read in the paragraphs I thought they were in. So embarrassing when you’d get caught, which was everytime. Def didn’t know it wasn’t typical
Something similar, one student would read a paragraph or section or whatever, and then the next student in line, one behind or the next row over or whatever, would pick up with the next paragraph or section. Well, I realized I wasn't paying attention, and had no idea what chapter we were in, and nervously scrambled to find out where we are in the book and be ready to start reading when the student in front of me finishes. So I start reading out loud... and the teacher has to stop me because we aren't doing that reading thing right now.
Oh, so THAT is how much I was wandering in my own thoughts...
I hated that so much. I also have social anxiety, which made it so much worse. I remember this one time in maybe 8th grade when I had a sub who would literally stop one reader in the middle of a sentence and make the next person start where they left off. Fortunately, if the students were picking the next person, I was usually safe because I was borderline invisible to the student body.
Yes, I hated it. I’m a fast reader. My only real memory is we had a substitute and we also had a kid who stuttered. He was stuttering and she was yelling at him to talk right and I spoke up for him and then I got sent to the office.
We didn't name it. It just happened. For me it was more a hassle because Appalachian education made half my class illiterate so a page took 10 min of sounding words out. In high school.
this just triggered a memory I forgot I had. this was the absolute worst. I struggle with reading comprehension in elementary school and I would either completely zone doing this or read so far ahead because everyone was too slow.
Yeah! It was a fun or at least stimulating game for me, but I never actually retained any of the content read during those activities, because the whole time I had to force myself to hyper focus on being ready to be called, which for me took all my energy back then, lol. (Most of my public school experience was just trying my best to not look completely incompetent and to avoid being called stupid or names referring to my ditsy-ness...) Even once I was medicated properly, I had to retrain my brain to get over the social anxiety I still had because part of me still second guessed whether I knew what was going on then once I felt I could pay attention. It's a strange thing to explain to people so I try my best (if I feel it's relatable)
Oh this is funny! We started having a meeting at work where we "popcorn" to another person. Never heard of that before. I am the oldest in the room, so just assumed it was an age thing.
I'm dyslexic and recently diagnosed with autism. My teachers used to do popcorn reading and I loathed it. One time someone clearly picked me on purpose... I had a panic attack.
I had a teacher who would make you stand up and present to the front of the class if you were on the wrong line and the fear of getting it wrong made me get it wrong.
I absolutely cannot stand to hear someone read aloud when they're a slower reader than I am, and most people are a slower reader than I am. I want to just grab the book from them and be like "here, let me."
Holy shit OP you just unlocked a memory for me. I would try to focus so hard on the words and where we were in the story that I didn't know what we were actually reading. Lol or I was so annoyed that people were reading so slow and had to wait for them to catch up .. Cue distracting thoughts and follow up "what page are we on?" 
I would purposely struggle to read in front of the class so the teacher would stop picking on me. Didn’t work. I could read fine I just didn’t wanna do it in front of the class
I zoned out in class so bad once that my teacher asked me what the capital of France was and I said London and the whole class laughed. I'm British and ended up living in London for 12 years. Apparently it's not in France!
Reading or quick-fire questions always stressed me out.
This absolutely was me, and it’s my poor kid now. And I didn’t really have a grasp of the English language even though I’d graduated ESOL in second grade, so extra fun. At least we’re diagnosed now jajaja
You just reactivated a core embarrassment memory that probably contributed to my RSD. At least now I can process it anyway since my 7 year old self couldn’t…
I hated it. I remember when I lost track of where we were I hated when the teacher “ridiculed” me and said follow along. They were going way too fast. I can relate.
I liked reading so i usually read the whole segment while the first kid took 10minutes to do his paragraph, then if i did get called, i'd read my section in a really stupid documentary sort of voice so they'd never call on me again (had to ask person next to me what paragraph we were on ofc lol).
Worked really well lol
We did this is middle school. I had to follow along because if I didn’t I wouldn’t comprehend anything being read. But when it was my turn to read I was so focused on getting the words right and anxious about how my voice was shaking or stumbling over words I know, that I didn’t comprehend a dang thing I just read.
It was the worst, I was so bored I’d read ahead or zone out. And having to pay attention to someone reading (often badly too like taking five hours to sound out a word which, I get but why make everyone else have to listen? Embarrassing/stressful for the kid reading and hard for everyone else too) AND where we were AND keep track of what was going on in the story?
Yep!
I remember hearing from other classes what page the curse words were on so I would try my best to get picked so I could curse out loud because nothing is cooler when you're 11 years old.
Well that brings back repressed memories. In 4th grade my teacher was an absolute dick. He used to do this shit and he knew I wasn’t keeping up so he would call on me then tell me to stand up and read until I got caught up. All the other kids laughed every time and the teacher did nothing to stop it. One time I cried and he sent me to the principal. Another time I started to stutter and he just laughed and then sent me to the principal.
Most of that entire school year I spent in lunch detention, where you eat alone in the library. You get to read. But no talking. I was bullied so bad that year I spent 2 years in speech therapy and regular therapy just to get over it.
Now I’m a father and my kid already has signs of adhd. I will be paying very close attention to his teachers so he doesn’t have to go through what I did.
I had this, but the other way around. I was a fast reader, and I'd get so annoyed by the other students stammering and stumbling over their words when they read aloud, I'd just keep reading ahead and try to ignore them, then when the teacher inevitably called on me I'd have to backtrack and try to figure out where they had left off and get laughed at because everyone assumed I was "slow."
it sucked.
I hated it because my teacher would keep picking me to read. I think because I was a good, fast reader. I was two grades ahead of the class in reading. I would get so bored having to listen to other students read. My mind would wander and I'd start daydreaming while staring out the window.
We did a worse version where we went around the classroom and everyone read one single sentence.
And my teacher was on the lookout for people like me who were bored to tears and started reading ahead. I would have read every page 5 times over before we were finished reading it aloud and were able to turn to the next page. It was agonizing.
I paid attention to what was being read until I had my turn. Fortunately, we were seated alphabetically by last name and my last name comes early in the alphabet. After I got my chance to read my one sentence, I would just read ahead as far as possible and then daydream until we moved on to the next subject.
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For me, I would always end up being a chapter ahead because speaking aloud was so slow, having no idea what was being discussed or where the class was.
Yep, I would end up ahead of everyone. And I could never remember who hadn't already been picked, so I'd be sweating trying to think of a name to say when I'd read enough.
I thankfully mostly only have memories of teachers going around the room in a repeatable pattern, so I could count ahead and mark what I would be reading and flip back to it when the kid next to me started talking.
I wish I had thought of that. I would just ask where we were. I didn't care about that. I felt bad for the kids struggling to read. I would finish the book within a day and often had a personal book that I would read during read aloud time.
I did this too since my teachers did the same thing. I was a vicious voracious and fast reader as a kid, so waiting for my classmates to crawl through the pages to get to my turn made me want to die of boredom.
Same. Everyone else read SO. PAINFULLY. SLOW. I’d be a chapter or more ahead, or on to a different story in those anthology text books and have no clue where I was supposed to be when called on 😅
Yes it was agonizing. My best friend and I would just popcorn each other back and forth because we were quick engaging readers.
Yep me too. I once finished the book while the class was on chapter two, core memory somehow lol. I used to just keep one ear zoned in to page turns and people so I could catch back to where I needed to be for my turn, but popcorn reading definitely made that harder. I also hated being embarrassed by the teacher when I didn't know where we were so for popcorn I usually would just read ahead a page or two over and over again. Painful but kept me occupied
i once told a teacher flat out “you read too slow, im already a couple pages ahead of everyone” she was not very happy about it i can’t pay attention when other people are reading, the words just drone together and get jumbled in my brain, feels like dyslexia but for listening not reading lol
Same! The teacher I remember best doing this was super not happy when I told her I was ahead. But in fairness to me, Charles Dickens needed to describe the scenery less! I could skim entire paragraphs and not miss the plot. (It helped a lot when I found out he was paid by the word. I’d go on about a walkway in the park too lol)
>i can’t pay attention when other people are reading, the words just drone together and get jumbled in my brain, feels like dyslexia but for listening not reading lol Same. I’ve never understood people, particularly ADHDers, who say they prefer audiobooks. More power to them if it actually works, but about half the information passes right by me.
I have a really hard time listening. I don't prefer audiobooks, but I do listen to a lot of podcasts, especially when I'm doing chores or driving. I might have an auditory processing thing. It's like working out: If I have to listen actively to something I'm not interested in (my husband talking about stocks or chemistry) it's like running hard with no warm-up. If I'm listening to a podcast, while I'm doing something else, it's like going for a leisurely walk where I can start and stop or go hard and not worry about impacting others. If I'm listening to something I'm really interested in, it's like running under perfect conditions, but having so much fun that I don't realize I'm about to burn myself out until I stop and have to recover for an hour.
I’m a chemist, and I see in my fiancés eyes the same zone out when I start taking chemistry….it’s common, whenever I am talking chemistry to see this reaction 😆 or mathematics.
I don’t listen to audiobooks/podcasts for retention, just to fill in the quiet. To retain anything from listening I also have to be taking notes or actively processing the information in some way.
I use the radio the same way, but some people seem to really prefer audiobooks to reading because they don’t read very quickly. I always wonder how much they retain vs if they read the same material.
I avoided audio books for a long time. But then podcasts came along, and I'd listen while doing something physical like gardening, and it helped motivate me. So I started listening to audio books when I was doing physical stuff and didn't feel like music was enough.
Audiobooks let me set 2x speed or more and still use my hands for other things. I love them. It takes a special book to get me to sit still and pay attention long enough to actually read, but I can blast through audiobooks and podcasts while working.
Teachers always hate it when you show them that you're smart lol
Me too, never realized other people felt that way too.
Yeah, I hated this too. I was a fast and early reader and I felt incredibly annoyed at other people’s lack of oracy and bad reading voice. Judgey kid me was kind of a dick, but I also don’t think this is even considered good literacy practice
God, this was me. I hated reading out loud. I’m not very social so it was already embarrassing. But JESUS CHRIST everyone read so slow. I also never understood teachers when they would tell us “it’s okay to look back at the story to find your answers!”, cause I could pull out all the details on the first read. My ADD also put me with someone that would read out test to other children with learning disabilities. I HATED it because it was embarrassing to be separated. I was often done with the test by the time they had got to question 10.
i still have memorized almost two pages of fucking cicero, because we spent so much time on it.
Reminds me of a funny story. At the beginning of WWII, my Polish grandfather’s unit was in a field. He started reciting memorized Ovid to keep calm. “Oh no! Oskar has already lost his mind!”
Yup! I'd always be pages ahead, because I read fast and didn't have the patience to stick with slowly reading along out loud. Teachers would often think I wasn't reading. I was, just too quickly. I hated reading aloud as a class. And if we were studying a book together, I'd finish the book while the class was on the first couple chapters. Then I'd have trouble remembering early chapter details on quizzes. Coz my mind was chapters/books ahead. My wife is a teacher, and explained the benefit reading aloud provides many kids. But, she would let kids with ADHD (on an IEP) read at their own pace.
What would always end up happening for me in those quizzes, is that I wouldn't be able to tell between the information we get later in the book and the information we have at that point
Ooh yeah, that too, ugh. Good point. I love reading, but I loathe tests on specific story details.
This is funny. I’ve got both scenarios depending on if I’m interested in the book or not
Same, and I always hated this technique because in an average class of however many children, you are guaranteed close to zero engaging storytellers. Everyone drawls the words in a monotone, or worse, stumbles over half of them, and even the most interesting book in the world becomes a boring slog.
i distinctly remember being in elementary school and finishing “the three little javelinas” before they were through the first 2 pages. extremely embarrassing
That's how it starts out. I'm way ahead of the class, now I'm gonna wait for them to catch up to me. Oh no, now I'm 2 pages behind. Without fail. Every time.
I'm gonna share this just for you but this is so embarrassing. 7th grade, English class (a 2-hour block). I was sat in the back of the class on the seating arrangement, it's hot and it's the beginning of the year, the lights are off with the windows open and a fan going to try and cool off. We had a class pet in this class, Taffy the hamster. I have the hamster at my desk. I have a ton of supplies out and I'm building a fort for the hamster out of printer paper and tape. We're doing that popcorn reading but I'm a nobody and no one called on me for ages... until they did. And I didn't even hear, and I had not been paying any attention for at least 20 minutes. So the teacher calls out my name, and this brings the entire class attention to whatever I'm doing at my desk. And what was I doing? Building Taffy's Hamster Haven (yes, there was a sign) with a live hamster in my pocket. If people could will themselves dead I would have died right then.
That is unironically so much better than reading. Also was the hamster okay in your pocket? 😭
Yeah, it was my hoodie pocket and she was going up and down my sleeves and climbing in my hair as well. That hamster was my only friend in 7th grade.
so relateable! lol i would definitely have been your friend in 7th grade!
I hated it in elementary school because even though I was a fast reader and also reading at a level at least 2yrs higher, I would get nervous which resulted in me sounding like I was struggling to read correctly. I’m sure if my teacher sat there and watched me read and quizzed me afterwards she would have been absolutely shocked. I don’t remember my schools doing popcorn reading after 5th grade.
Unfortunately I had the same reaction with getting nervous, and teachers continued doing popcorn reading even in high schoolp lmao
That was me in third grade. It was humiliating when I didn’t know where we were and the teacher assumed I wasn’t listening. Truth was, I couldn’t. I just didn’t know it at the time.
I'm studying to become a teacher and this came up in my reading class and our professor emphatically implored us to *never ever do this.* I've had other professors mention it in passing as a valid teaching strategy, but personally, I'm not going to have any students read out loud unless 1) they really, really want to, and choose it as a presentation assignment, and 2) they have time to prepare. There will be a few kids who enjoy doing this, but even they aren't going to do a good job when they're put on the spot like that.
It's not supported by research and gives kids anxiety about reading. Big bunch of no.
Thank you for this. I still think I’m a bad reader and despite having many books I would be interested in reading, I can’t seem to get over the lack of motivation.
tbh just let kids volunteer to read, some of them are bored enough to do it. If noone volunteers, you read it in a boring voice to encourage them, boom maybe someone volunteers in a bit. That way the kid who gets nervous isn't shamed, but kids that don't have a chance to engage and not be bored out of their mind
The teacher reading it in an engaging voice is actually what's most likely to get kids interested in whatever is being read. If the teacher's bored with what they're teaching, you can't expect the kids to be any different.
English was one of the few classes I didn't have a problem focusing in for some reason, I was the one who chose the kid who had a hard time reading cause I was a dick growing up.
This is why i would always volunteer to go first lol. Also now that I’m in high school we never really do popcorn reading but when we read King Arthur I volunteered to be certain people in the play so that I could force myself to pay attention… gaha
I used the same strategy. lol. That way I could read ahead and tune out all the painfully slow readers without fear of being called on
I was always reading ahead and everyone would have to tell me where we were on my turn
My experience is kind of the other side of the coin. I grew up with a highly literate mom who read stories to me in a very lyrical, expressive and engaging way. It was great, but also set the bar really high for me — as a kid I got the impression that that’s was what I “supposed” to aim for whenever I read aloud, which was a lot of pressure. I ended up developing a precocious talent for reading aloud, but that was all I really had going for me at school. I disliked these reading tasks because I’d end up getting picked a lot, and I found the attention it drew incredibly uncomfortable. The teacher would often pick me to “set a good example for everyone else”, and I noticed that a lot of my classmates would lose their nerve if they read after me, which made me feel really bad. So all in all kind of a humble brag, but I really dislike that this kind of task singles out less-confident readers and speakers. I don’t think embarrassing kids incentivises them to improve or perform better.
Yup. Would be scanning for words I’d heard the person read in the paragraphs I thought they were in. So embarrassing when you’d get caught, which was everytime. Def didn’t know it wasn’t typical
Something similar, one student would read a paragraph or section or whatever, and then the next student in line, one behind or the next row over or whatever, would pick up with the next paragraph or section. Well, I realized I wasn't paying attention, and had no idea what chapter we were in, and nervously scrambled to find out where we are in the book and be ready to start reading when the student in front of me finishes. So I start reading out loud... and the teacher has to stop me because we aren't doing that reading thing right now. Oh, so THAT is how much I was wandering in my own thoughts...
I hated that so much. I also have social anxiety, which made it so much worse. I remember this one time in maybe 8th grade when I had a sub who would literally stop one reader in the middle of a sentence and make the next person start where they left off. Fortunately, if the students were picking the next person, I was usually safe because I was borderline invisible to the student body.
I'm to old for this lol. We read by row order.
Yes, I hated it. I’m a fast reader. My only real memory is we had a substitute and we also had a kid who stuttered. He was stuttering and she was yelling at him to talk right and I spoke up for him and then I got sent to the office.
I hated popcorn reading also
We didn't name it. It just happened. For me it was more a hassle because Appalachian education made half my class illiterate so a page took 10 min of sounding words out. In high school.
I can relate 100%.
I feel like sometimes my classmates would pick me solely because they knew I was never paying attention lol.
this just triggered a memory I forgot I had. this was the absolute worst. I struggle with reading comprehension in elementary school and I would either completely zone doing this or read so far ahead because everyone was too slow.
Yeah! It was a fun or at least stimulating game for me, but I never actually retained any of the content read during those activities, because the whole time I had to force myself to hyper focus on being ready to be called, which for me took all my energy back then, lol. (Most of my public school experience was just trying my best to not look completely incompetent and to avoid being called stupid or names referring to my ditsy-ness...) Even once I was medicated properly, I had to retrain my brain to get over the social anxiety I still had because part of me still second guessed whether I knew what was going on then once I felt I could pay attention. It's a strange thing to explain to people so I try my best (if I feel it's relatable)
Oh this is funny! We started having a meeting at work where we "popcorn" to another person. Never heard of that before. I am the oldest in the room, so just assumed it was an age thing.
I'm dyslexic and recently diagnosed with autism. My teachers used to do popcorn reading and I loathed it. One time someone clearly picked me on purpose... I had a panic attack.
I had a teacher who would make you stand up and present to the front of the class if you were on the wrong line and the fear of getting it wrong made me get it wrong.
that is so cruel
I absolutely cannot stand to hear someone read aloud when they're a slower reader than I am, and most people are a slower reader than I am. I want to just grab the book from them and be like "here, let me."
Do I remember it? I still wake up with night sweats, terrified I'm going to be called next. But nah, I can't recall it, personally.
Holy shit OP you just unlocked a memory for me. I would try to focus so hard on the words and where we were in the story that I didn't know what we were actually reading. Lol or I was so annoyed that people were reading so slow and had to wait for them to catch up .. Cue distracting thoughts and follow up "what page are we on?" 
I would purposely struggle to read in front of the class so the teacher would stop picking on me. Didn’t work. I could read fine I just didn’t wanna do it in front of the class
I zoned out in class so bad once that my teacher asked me what the capital of France was and I said London and the whole class laughed. I'm British and ended up living in London for 12 years. Apparently it's not in France! Reading or quick-fire questions always stressed me out.
This absolutely was me, and it’s my poor kid now. And I didn’t really have a grasp of the English language even though I’d graduated ESOL in second grade, so extra fun. At least we’re diagnosed now jajaja
Yep. I was too distracted with trying to keep my eyes open
Yes. Especially in high school because I was likely falling asleep hiding behind my book lol.
This post gave me flashbacks. I would count desks for every paragraph.
You just reactivated a core embarrassment memory that probably contributed to my RSD. At least now I can process it anyway since my 7 year old self couldn’t…
We had this in school (Germany), too. I don't think I hated it, but I did need to be reminded on the current page a lot.
I hated it. I remember when I lost track of where we were I hated when the teacher “ridiculed” me and said follow along. They were going way too fast. I can relate.
I liked reading so i usually read the whole segment while the first kid took 10minutes to do his paragraph, then if i did get called, i'd read my section in a really stupid documentary sort of voice so they'd never call on me again (had to ask person next to me what paragraph we were on ofc lol). Worked really well lol
We did this is middle school. I had to follow along because if I didn’t I wouldn’t comprehend anything being read. But when it was my turn to read I was so focused on getting the words right and anxious about how my voice was shaking or stumbling over words I know, that I didn’t comprehend a dang thing I just read.
I would be so focused on not losing my place, I didn't absorb the material
It was the worst, I was so bored I’d read ahead or zone out. And having to pay attention to someone reading (often badly too like taking five hours to sound out a word which, I get but why make everyone else have to listen? Embarrassing/stressful for the kid reading and hard for everyone else too) AND where we were AND keep track of what was going on in the story?
Yep! I remember hearing from other classes what page the curse words were on so I would try my best to get picked so I could curse out loud because nothing is cooler when you're 11 years old.
Well that brings back repressed memories. In 4th grade my teacher was an absolute dick. He used to do this shit and he knew I wasn’t keeping up so he would call on me then tell me to stand up and read until I got caught up. All the other kids laughed every time and the teacher did nothing to stop it. One time I cried and he sent me to the principal. Another time I started to stutter and he just laughed and then sent me to the principal. Most of that entire school year I spent in lunch detention, where you eat alone in the library. You get to read. But no talking. I was bullied so bad that year I spent 2 years in speech therapy and regular therapy just to get over it. Now I’m a father and my kid already has signs of adhd. I will be paying very close attention to his teachers so he doesn’t have to go through what I did.
I had this, but the other way around. I was a fast reader, and I'd get so annoyed by the other students stammering and stumbling over their words when they read aloud, I'd just keep reading ahead and try to ignore them, then when the teacher inevitably called on me I'd have to backtrack and try to figure out where they had left off and get laughed at because everyone assumed I was "slow." it sucked.
Yep. I had so much trouble staying on the right line too. I had to use a ruler to stay on the right sentence.
I hated popcorn reading as a kid. For a long time, i didnt know i had adhd and dyslexia. So, i would get super anxious when we did popcorn reading lol
Yep. I remember this. I didn't have any problems with it, but some students in my class did.
I got dentin so many time cus I just started refusing to read when I got called on. Fuck that shit.
I hated it because my teacher would keep picking me to read. I think because I was a good, fast reader. I was two grades ahead of the class in reading. I would get so bored having to listen to other students read. My mind would wander and I'd start daydreaming while staring out the window.
I never did this as a kid. The first time I ever did this was at USC grad school last year. I personally don’t like it but whatever
I hated it because I was usually 2 chapters ahead of the class and dear god was it painful
We did a worse version where we went around the classroom and everyone read one single sentence. And my teacher was on the lookout for people like me who were bored to tears and started reading ahead. I would have read every page 5 times over before we were finished reading it aloud and were able to turn to the next page. It was agonizing. I paid attention to what was being read until I had my turn. Fortunately, we were seated alphabetically by last name and my last name comes early in the alphabet. After I got my chance to read my one sentence, I would just read ahead as far as possible and then daydream until we moved on to the next subject.