More Than Words-Per-Minute: A Hip Hop Approach for Culturally Rooted Fluency Development

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:45 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Literacy, Identity, and Justice: Critical Perspectives

Abstract

This study explores how Hip Hop can be used as a culturally sustaining approach to fluency instruction in a fourth-grade literacy classroom. Drawing on sociocultural theories of language, cognitive science, and Hip Hop-based education, the study examines how rhythm, repetition, and performance support students’ development in accuracy, prosody, and expression. Through a practitioner-research design, students engaged with Hip Hop texts through repeated readings, lyric analysis, and a culminating cipher performance. Preliminary findings suggest increased student engagement, linguistic confidence, and reading fluency, especially among historically marginalized learners. This work challenges reductive, one-size-fits-all fluency practices and offers a liberatory framework that honors students’ cultural and linguistic identities while restoring joy, agency, and relevance to reading instruction.

Authors

• Bianca J. Nightengale-Lee, Western Michigan University

• Kandace Lavender, Read Write Kalamazoo

• Asif Masum, Western Michigan University