This chapter about fluency really reminded me of my daughter when she was in 2nd grade, her teacher asked her to practice reading with feeling and changing her voice as my daughter put it. At the time I just thought okay whatever, but after listening to her read this way I could tell a huge difference in her understanding of the text. I would notice that she would go back through a sentence and change the way she read it after reading through it once and reading it incorrectly. Before listening to her read was somewhat challenging but afterwards it was almost enjoyable. I definitely saw how this changed her reading skills for the better. I really found the examples in the text helpful to understand how important having these skills are to interpret the text. Reading through them without punctuation really showed how the meaning could change so much. It makes sense why these children are having a hard time comprehending what they read. I liked what the author said about using dialogue to practice with. I noticed that my son’s teacher this year did a lot of reading through short plays with the children, now I can see that this would help them practice expressive reading. I would think this would allow them to see how it works easier than just reading a book. I can see also how direct instruction will be very necessary to help students understand how it can change the meaning of the text and make reading more enjoyable. I can still hear my daughter’s monotone voice droning on as my eyes glazed over and I prayed for the story to end, if I only knew then what I know now.
To begin this chapter, I would just like to quote one of the first sentences. "Fluency, the ability to read with the intended interpretation of the author, is a critical but often neglected component of reading instruction" (Devries text, page 253). Whenever I think about fluency, I do not think, "I am understanding what the author is telling me?" Instead I think, "Did I understand all of that?" This is probably one of the reasons why it is so important to know information about the author. Having background information about the author and what his/her life has been about leading up to that point, you will be able to read the text more fluently. This sentence really made me stop and think for a moment. I enjoyed the section on automaticity (mostly because that wasn't a word I had really heard of before). Basically, you need to be able to coordinate many complex subskills and strategies. This will determine your level of automaticity. Something to help students in this area is helping them to recognize and read sight words. Sight words are so important and in my opinion, is one of the reasons why reading to children from one on is so important. This is going to get me on a rant, sorry everyone!!
My mom ALWAYS read to us kids before we went to bed at night. And if she had time and we had the desire, she would read to us at other times as well. If she couldn't read because she had house work to do or other things occupying her time, she would have one of us older kids read to the younger kids. When I got into middle school and high school, my younger siblings always asked me to read book (which normally turned into 'just' one more). This is one of the simplest joys we can give our children and I fear that television is taking over the reading time in most American homes. One of the questions I asked my tutor students was if they got read to at home. And, they said no (both of my students didn't pass reading last year). I do not intend to blame parents for their children having problems with reading, but I feel that parents do play a huge role in their children's success. If this is in fact true, could this also mean there is a possibility they have a role in the children's failure? I understand that some parents do everything they can and the child doesn't succeed still, but when I hear things like this, I do not feel the parents are doing everything they can to help their children. Okay, off my rant now!
This chapter was actually pretty short, but again had a lot of information. I enjoyed the sections that explained teaching the children how to fluently read the text using punctuation, expression, and phrasing. It is amazing how each of these can change the meaning of a sentence. Calmly saying a sentence and then shouting the same sentence can turn that character into being upset. This is also why we as teachers need to read read alouds prior to class so we can model for the students how to read fluently and use the right tone of voice for each sentence.
I would also like to repeat Ms. Stoppel's statement in class for anyone reading this blog: the back of this book is a huge tool for us as the appendixes are full of information and activities and there is also an instructional materials section (Appendix D) that is full of word cards, bingo game cards, and graphic organizers. I might try to incorporate some of these into my lessons the next week!! I hope everyone is having a great week (unfortunately, my students didn't show up Monday for tutoring)!
Jenni: Thanks for sharing! It can get boring listening to beginning readers (I have sat through many siblings reading to me). However, it is nice to hear that the teacher is trying to help them. Monotone is never the way to go with reading, even non-fiction. I have noticed that when I read silently, even, I am thinking expressively or using the punctuation marks to think as to what the author was conveying. Maybe I need to find ways to do this with non-fiction to make it more interesting as that is one of my least enjoyable things to read! Anyway, loved hearing about your experience!
Susanna, I agree with you a short chapter but so important and good. Personally I enjoyed your rant though it stepped on my toes a little, in a good way. My oldest son loved to be read to from a young age and loved books. Now as a 12 year old he doesn’t enjoy reading as much as I’d like, but it is really easy for him. I do see how the amount of time him and I spent with books did influence his literacy success. He knew his alphabet early and was always very good at expressing what he thought was going on in the books. My daughter who was next never wanted to sit long enough for a whole book, I had to fight her to stay. My next son came when she was 18 months old and I was a little overwhelmed with a 3 year old, 18 month old and the newborn in a new town. So this was not a battle that I fought, however I have regretted it. My daughter as I said in my post struggles a little in reading and I worry that it was because of the lack of me reading to her. I do think that it would have helped her, fortunately she has had awesome teachers and they have brought her up to speed. Unfortunately as a parent you make many mistakes but you just do your best at the time and you try to learn from your mistakes. I’m impressed with your mother’s dedication to reading what a great example you had. What I have noticed in the schools is that the majority of children that are not read to have parents that quite possibly are not strong readers themselves which makes it frustrating for them. I am looking for ideas for what we can do as educators to assist these families. One idea I came up with is maybe having books on CD, podcast, etc… however, you would have to make sure the family has the technology to play these items. This way the student could listen to the book with the parent and then maybe the teacher could ask for the parent to ask certain questions about the story to the student and then write the answers down or record them. Just an idea, if you all have any others I would love to hear them.
I am working on fluency with my tutoring students so this chapter was very beneficial to me. I think the phonograms that we are learning and reviewing each day are helping the boys tremendously. My tutoring students had a lesson in reading expressively last week. I audio taped them while reading a passage after demonstrating how the passage should be expressively read. The students listened to themselves as they tried to read the passage expressively. They enjoyed hearing their own voices and realized that they were not noticing punctuation or reading with very much expression at all. I love the story, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and am going to read it next week to my students and maybe have them try reading it expressively. I also want to try to have my tutoring students assess each other using a checklist while partner reading. There are always great activities at the end of each chapter. I found a book of poetry at my local library that I would like to share with my students next week; then maybe the students could try the poetry party mentioned at the end of this chapter before tutoring sessions end.
Lacey Keller As like many of you have stated, this chapter was short, but it was compact! What I got out of this chapter is that students need to be able to read fluently so they can comprehend and appreciate the material.
I love, love, love the reader's theater that is often found in our elementary classrooms. As a para, I often am in charge of creating costumes for the students. It is amazing to me that when they put on the costumes how easily some students can become that character! However, on the other hand, some students "lock-up" and cannot play the character. I remember being in charge of a group of second grade students, and I would first model the expression. The students seemed to do much better after listening to me. Fluency is definitely a skill that must be carefully tended to throughout the school year.
Melissa, Great idea on recording the students to increase fluency! And, it also brought in the use of technology :) I am glad you can do this with your group and have your boys respond to such activities. I also think you have a great set-up with poetry for next week. Best of luck to you!
As I read the chapter about fluency.. I really tried to place myself in a strugglinng readers shoes. This is one concept of reading that can be so hard. I love the non sense words. When I worked in Title I reading we would allow the students to create their own non sense sentences using the non sense words. They loved it! Although fluency is tough, the teaching strategies are numerous and it can be a lot of fun. I also use a lot of echo reading with the students I am tutoring. I think any time you can model is great. I also really enjoyed reading about expression. This gives students a chance to really get involved with the reading. Fluency is one of my favorite concepts to teach and this chapter had a lot of great strategies and really gave me a better understanding of how to teach this!
Melissa: I use a recorder. I think it is the best way to assess their proogress. I really enjoyed the way you used the recording in term of expression! What fun! I might have to borrow your idea! I think my boys would love that!
I was excited to see that Chapter ten is on fluency sense that is my goal with fourth graders. I loved how the author explained how fluency and comprehension go hand in hand under the reciprocal theory. I noticed that the WCPM based on grade level was different than the CFC text. This text says 128 for 4th graders but I guess that's only five more words than the CFC text. The text reminded teachers to have the student skip the word and finish reading the sentence in order to figure the word out. I need to make sure I am doing this and teaching skills to decode words and not giving the word to the student. This was a good reminder. With readers struggling with fluency the text said to make short term goals that can quickly be accomplished. There are activities on the fcrr.org website that I think would be great for accomplishing this task. Students can record their WPM for five or so reads and see the progress they are making. There is even a printable graph to chart progress. My students last semester loved seeing their progress on those graphs! They wanted to go up, up, up every time they read! Right now I am struggling with my most fluent reader shouting out the correct word when my dis-fluent reader pauses or makes a mistake. Any ideas on how to correct this? I just keep telling him that I know it's hard but we need to let him figure it out. I didn't realize all of the components of fluency before reading this chapter. I know of rate, automaticity, and expression but I hadn't heard of prosody before. I'm glad the text gave six different websites on page 272 for readers theatre scripts because I want to do this with my students. On page 269 there is a fluency log and I think this is a great idea to get the parents involved! I've been looking for something like this. This was a great chapter and I'm going to go back and read through the tutoring strategies again and try to use as many as possible!
When I worked in Title 1 I also had students create their own nonsense words but I never thought about creating their own nonsense sentences! I'm sure they loved this idea!
I really want to tape my students reading as well! Did you use a tape-recorder or your computer? I need to figure out how I want to do it because I think the students could benefit tremendously from hearing themselves. It sounds like yours did!
Lanewberry: I have enjoyed working with my tutoring students on fluency. I keep pointing out the punctuation marks and trying to get them to tell me what an exclamation point is and how you read a sentence that has an exclamation point in it. I usually read the sentence first and show them how to read it with expression and sometimes they look at me like I am crazy!
This was a short chapter but packed with so much good information and I felt like I have a lot of “light bulb moments.” I am questioning my decision to make phonics my goal after taking into account how my students read and consider that this might be the source of their comprehension problems. This Chapter was full of useful information and activities to incorporate into lesson plans. I think they all are, but I am seeing how this chapter affects the students that I am working with. Some of the sections that stood out to me were Automaticity and the sub-sections: recognizing common words or sight words, recognizing letter/letter combinations and sounds, and recognizing chunks/syllables within words. I found it interesting that it points out that sometimes teacher’s encouragement actually interferes with student’s fluency/comprehension. I also thought the chapter did a good job and trying to explain just HOW inter-related fluency and comprehension are. As soon as one component increases, it feeds/increases the other one; and as soon as one component breaks down so does the other one. One of the things I appreciate about this text is how it points out the fluent and disfluent reader, just like it has pointed in other chapters (proficient and unskilled reader). I like this because it makes it easy to reference in the future and if I can find the table, I can then read more about the problem I am facing with students in the surrounding text.
Desiree: you made a couple points in your blog that I really agree with and appreciated. You mentioned you needed the reminder to have students skip the word, finish the passage and see if they can figure it out. I needed reminded of that as well. Another thing I liked that you pointed out was about making the short term goals that students can reach easily! I think this applies to any goals we make this summer with students and I was really glad you pointed it out again. I have some problems with students giving answers too quickly as well, and I don't have an answer for you about that.
I am a firm believer in what the book stated about reading being like any other skill. The more someone practices the easier reading becomes. I have seen this with my own child. She struggled with reading at first so I had her read all the time at home. She is amazing at reading now for her age. While I am tutoring I am seeing students who do not read often at all. They are lagging behind their peers and if they would just read more they would be right where they need to be. The thing is I don't know if most working parents are aware of what they need to do to work with their children. Being in the school system has really helped me understand what I need to do to be active in my daughters education. It goes so much further than just the classroom. Yes the teacher is very important but that does not take any responsibility off of the parent. They need to be just as active and concerned about their child's progress. My goal is fluency and I enjoyed reading about fluency in this chapter. I have ordered all the books that were referred to in class. They are "Partner Poem in Building Fluency, Reading, Writing, and Word Walls, and Teaching Struggling Readers with Poetry." They are very helpful and very interesting to read. I am also reminding students about punctuation and how their voice should sound if there is an exclamation point or question mark. If students don't observe punctuation, the book states that comprehension breaks down. I have noticed this in my tutoring sessions also.
Carrie H--The chapter was very informational and I had light bulb moments also. I like all the information and know I want to keep fluency as my goal. I am glad it helped you re-think some things. Our minds are forever churning aren't they?
While being a para, I have noticed many times children trying to be the first one to finish reading a passage. Most of the children that try to read fast, do not comprehend the passage as well for readers who are trying to understand what the story or passage is trying to say. Most of the time, teachers will ask questions about what their students have just read, or have a worksheet to go along with the passage. If a student hurries through the passage, he or she will have to go back and re-read to answer the questions. Recognizing common words or sight words is a big step for children in learning how to read. There are many words with exceptions when it comes to sounding out words. I think it is important for children to master a set of sight words before they read a passage so they will not get confused when seeing words such as have, done, live and come. Phonograms should also come automatically and is a part of automaticity. If the student is trying to sound out shell, it is crucial they recognize the sh go together in order to pronounce the word correctly. I also have seen other peers or teacher automatically give a child the correct way to say a word rather than giving the child strategies to sounding out the word. It is beneficial for the child to become a better reader. A peer or teacher telling them the word is not helping them learn how to read. I use echo reading while tutoring this summer. The kids enjoy hearing me read something with expression while they repeat the same thing back with the same expression. I have also used flash cards with a word on it from our story that the students may not understand. They take turns putting the words on the tri-fold.
Melissa H-I agree with you about the parents being just as involved as the teacher. I have noticed in the school system I work in, many things get sent home for the students parents to read with them or go over with them. I wonder how many parents actually do the work with their children or just sign it and put it back in their book bags. I have seen many times where the child's book bag does not even get opened for up to a week because the same papers or books are in the bag. It's sad to think about but everyone knows it happens. Parents should care about their child's education just as much as their teacher.
The beginning of this chapter introduced the idea that there are several different definitions of fluency, in fact, in this text there are seven. However, despite the fact that there are seven different definitions of fluency one thing they all seemed to agree on is the idea of the reciprocal theory. This theory “suggests the relationship between fluency and comprehension is reciprocal rather than unidirectional” and that “as the reader is able to comprehend more material, her fluency increases, because the brain does not need to slow down to process the print. And when the reader can read fluently, her brain is free to focus on comprehension.” I find that this theory is really important for us, as teachers, to learn about fluency and I feel that this is important for us to share this idea with our students. They should be taught to understand that the more they read and the better they get at it the easier it will become to them in both ways, with fluency and comprehension. Reading further through the chapter, the author discussed the different components of fluency including rate, automaticity (“the ability to engage and coordinate a number of complex subskills and strategies with little cognitive effort”), phrasing or prosody, expression and punctuation. Of all these components I can see how they are important, not one more than the other, however I also see that each of the components can become dependent on another one. I can definitely see how punctuation can affect expression and how rate can affect expression and phrasing. I also can see how our read alouds can really affect a child’s fluency skills, the expression we use when we read and the correct phrasing can be a great example for our students reading abilities.
The assessments in this chapter were very similar to those in the other chapters, especially by encouraging the rubrics and miscue analyses. As for the intervention section of this chapter (the section I always look most forward too), there were several ideas I know I will utilize for my next set of lesson plans. For example, the echo reading strategy is one I have observed before in my internship classroom and also one that I strategy that I don’t believe is difficult to utilize! I also like the choral reading strategy! I have dog-earred this page, as I know I’m going to utilize this strategy as well.
I also agree with you that reading is much like any other skills in that it becomes easier the more you practice and do it. Although my daughter is only three, I can already see the impact of me reading to her. She is already understand that certain words go with certain pictures, certain expressions are expressed throughout stories and much more. I think it is so sad that there are students out there who don’t enjoy reading because they struggle in so many ways. It is so important for parents and teachers to recognize their students’ struggles in reading because it can affect their lives in so many ways. Struggling in reading can affect more content areas than just reading, math, science and social studies are just a few of the areas that would be affected in a negative way if a student struggles with fluency and the other of the Big 5. Great post!
The students that I am working with are working on fluency. I really enjoyed the chapter because it gave me some helpful ideas for the students. I am going to use poetry this week with my students. The book gives some activities to do with the students and I am going to try a few of them. So far I have done the echo reading and flash cards. The next thing I am going to do is the poetry party. The students like listening to poems so I am going to use that to my advantage. The book also has websites to find poetry so I found that very helpful. On Tuesday July 5 I used the fluency fleeting phrases and the students really wowed me. The first and second time they went through the phrase they read 11 in one minute. I put both sets together and let them do it a third time and one student read 21 phrases correctly and the other read 20. I was so proud of them and they could tell I was proud and I could see how excited they got. I have about 50 more phrases for them because they were asking if they could do it again or take them home to show their parents.
Carrie H I agree this chapter was full of some great information. I enjoyed reading about sight words, recognizing letter/letter combinations and sounds, and recognizing chunks/syllables within words. Any information I can get to help these students I am all for. This is definitely a chapter that I am going to go back over and read again.
First of all - wow! I had no idea there were so many parts to fluency and how many sub-parts to those parts there are! After reading this chapter, I got a real understanding on how important fluency is for comprehension (referring to the reciprocal theory). Another part of this chapter that was interesting to read was the impact the instruction has on fluency. I liked seeing the differences in instruction of fluent readers and instruction of disfluent readers. That aspect of the chapter may have the biggest impact on how I teach my students in the future.
Re: Cody (George P.) I smiled as I read your post. It's so exciting to see them actually making progress! I think it's really awesome that you are including poetry in your fluency lesson plans. I think the structure and rhythm of poems will really help what your trying to do.
Fluent readers can recognize words and quickly decode unknown words. Chapter ten explains that there are multiple definitions of fluency. Fluency contains four major components. These four components are rate, automaticity, prosody, and expression. One of my students has a difficult time with responding to punctuation. Therefore, I really liked reading more about teaching students to read with expression by looking at the punctuation being used.
Chapter ten also points out the process of guessing a reader's fluency. I really like the checklist in appendix C.41. The checklist consists of the four stages of reading fluency. There are many types of strategies for reading fluency that can be done individually or in small groups.
Reply Alexandra: I feel the same as you! I had no idea so much went into fluency and how important it is. This chapter really helped me because my overall goal is fluency. I got some great ideas and plan on using this chapter for guidance through the rest of my tutoring. It was very neat to see the differences of instruction for fluent vs. non-fluent readers.
Since I chose fluency as the goal for my tutoring students I found this chapter to be very helpful. I found myself really taking a look at chart 10.1. These were the traits of fluent and disfluent readers. I found myself thinking about the traits that my tutoring students had and where they kind of fit. It also helped me find a more item to pinpoint with each of my students. I also found the information about students who read word-to-word and the reason they read this way. A lot of that is because of poor instruction. They are asked to read aloud more often and they are interrupted more often. As I think back to things I have done with students I probably haven’t given some of them as much time as I should have. I should give them more time to work out words. I also think if they are reading in a group of students they know if they pause that someone will just tell them the word and they won’t have to try. It’s nice of the students to want to help out but it may not be the best for their classmate.
Alexandra- I also liked to see the ways that different instruction had an impact on students. I like to hear of ways that work and don't work so you have an idea of items that you should or shouldn't do with your students.
I think it is common sense that fluency and comprehension go hand in hand. If a student doesn’t know HOW to read the passage, how could they be expected to comprehend it? On the subject of “rate”, the text stated that 4th graders read at a pretty slow rate. I student taught 4th grade last semester and when we did the 1 minute timings, the boys read for speed. This led to many words mispronounced or skipped. I was constantly lecturing the class on reading for fluency and that when we read fast, we aren’t reading fluently. The girls read at a slower rate. Boys are competitive, that is probably a huge factor in their reading. I did notice with most of the students in my class that they didn’t respond to punctuation. My favorite thing was at the end of the day I read to the class. It was just a free read where we picked a book and I read it. No questions, just a story. When I read I modeled constantly punctuation and expression. I really got into reading the stories we read! During our guided reading time I constantly “promoted” punctuation. We would stop and I would go back and ask them what mark they see there. If there was an explanation point I asked them what they think that meant. Then I had them go back and re-read the sentence again, showing that expression. They had fun with it because it gave them a chance to get loud. I wanted them to read with expression and be animated. I don’t think enough work is done in the classroom on punctuation anymore, just my opinion.
Jessica- You bring up a very good point-“they read more often and are interrupted more often.” Interruptions happen all the time and it can’t be beneficial to a student. They lose track of where they are and of any comprehension they may have had. The biggest problem I see is other students shout out the word that the reader is struggling with. That is one thing I have struggled with. How do you prevent that? I have found myself over and over again telling students that we need to let them figure it out but it still happens.
After reading chapter 10, I realized that my goal should have been fluency and not comprehension even though the test said my student’s scores in fluency were right on. Now I see why comprehension and fluency go hand in hand. Furthermore, there were many parts of the chapter that stood out to me, but the one that I have thought about the most was about fluent readers know when to slow down. For the timed test, my students did an outstanding job. They were either advanced or at the high, ready for instruction level. However, I didn’t calculate if they were pausing for the comma, stopping at the periods, etc. I was just focused on how far they read and their mistakes. Now I feel like I have a better understanding of what I should have done with my students. Luck fully, I was doing fluent activities along with comprehension, but I believe the student may have excelled even more by improving their fluency skills. I guess teaching is like reading; we gradually attain new information, practice it, apply it, and scaffold even more new information onto what we just learned to improve our skills! Then I would like to add that the activities at the end of the chapter are very resourceful, I tried the echo read, but I found out, having two students on IEP’s all they want to do is individual work. So this activity wasn’t as successful as I would have liked it to be.
Response to Lacey Keller:
Thank you for sharing. I too enjoy the reader’s theater, but even though I have planned it within my lesson, I don’t think I’m going to be able to fit it within my tutor session. My goal is comprehension and not fluency, so the reader’s theater is just an extra activity that I had planned if time permitted. There just seems like we have to do so many other things and all I want to do, is let them have fun learning. Well, hopefully in the fall, I can have the students do a reader’s theater as I student teach!
This chapter goes great with my goal of comprehension. Reading this chapter makes me want to go back and reread the chapters on comprehension, well okay I am going to go back and reread it! I was refreshed on what I know from reading this chapter and learned a few things too. Fluency is more then just being able to correctly read the material or text at hand. It is the ability to read with the intended interpretation of the author (DeVries text pg 253). My favorite part of this section, well I guess it is the same in each chapter, is the Assessment part. Learning new ways to assess students is great. I also believe that I will get a lot of use out of figure 10.9 on page 263. I am going to link those to the comprehension strategies to help my students.
Nöelle Pohl VC Chapter 10: DeVries Text Chapter 10; to me brought the one of the most important BIG 5: Fluency. As fluency + comprehension drive understanding…that being said; the fluent learning skills of recognizing, associating, meanings, chunks, expressions, punctuations, echo reading, oral recitation are ALL clues to help drive the fluent understand of HOW a work looks then sounds to the student learner. Now these three things: phoneme awareness, automatic decoding skills, and practice you probably already knew before you came to this course. But there are two or three areas that you might not know that can contribute mightily to the development of fluency. First, vocabulary development: the more WE as future teachers know about a word, the faster you can read it. If you don’t know what a word means, it can slow your system down. One of the easiest most rewarding contributions you can make to make our student’s growth of fluency beginning with WORD KNOWLEDGE! As fluency is the developmental process that connects decoding with everything we know about words to make the meaning of the text come to life. Fluency is a WONDERFUL bridge to comprehension (as stated above) and to a lifelong love of reading. As we focus on the examples about the building blocks of fluency: rate, automaticity, prosody and expression help the reader to see; literally clearer in the understanding of what is important to remember here…if we teach the connections between types of word knowledge. EXPLICITLY teach spelling, vocabulary, suffixes, and grammar. We must remember: “Teach words, words, words.” (Use word walls as we have discussed in lecture and have on our Tri-Folds) Teach accuracy, and then give opportunities to move to fluency: Use partner reading, read to them yourselves, use repeated reading techniques for stories. These steps I use and follow in my lesson plans and hope of one day in my classroom!
George P-- I love your ideas with poetry. I too am going to us poetry. I am planning on doing that this coming week! Hope you don't mind but I might have to borrow a few of your ideas and change them up to meet the needs of my students!!!!
As I stated in my post: Fluency + Comprehension=the MAIN purpose for ALL reading…that being said, the traits of fluent and diffluent readers IS promenade in all aspects of our educational experiences. I feel we as pre-service teachers can take these experiences of tutoring and as you said PINPOINT the areas our students are struggling in...As fluency drives comprehension based skills with rate and automaticity; fulfilling ALL aspects of the component learning experience must also be our goal.
I think that fluency is important, but I also think that comprehension is more important. Fluency and comprehension coincide with each other like a team. One of the students I am tutoring reads quite slow for her grade level, yet she still is able to comprehend everything she has read. Sometimes I am able to read what I would call quickly but not remember anything I read. I can also remember sitting in class listening to all the other students read and how quickly they were reading. I knew that I could not read as fast as they could and so that is all I focused on was trying to be more efficient while reading. I wanted to read as fast or faster than my classmates. When I did that is when I started struggling with comprehension. I guess that point I am trying to make is that fluency when combined with comprehension is a perfect combination. With practice and proper balance of learning each at the appropriate rate, students will be able to read at a faster rate and remember their reading material.
Assessments are one of the best tools to use for teaching fluency because most likely they will read words that they have difficulty with and will allow you, the teacher, to see what needs to be worked on. The miscue analysis has been very valuable while tutoring. I really like that two activities “Tape, Check, Chart.” I think it is a fun way for students to increase their fluency reading. It gives them a goal of something to work towards.
I think this is the best math formula I have seen: fluency + comprehension drive understanding. That is exactly right. I think that comprehension brings understanding but students must learn to read and comprehend at the same time.
In talking with one of my mentors today about teaching, she mentioned to me that the goal of reading teachers is to inspire students by teaching them that reading can take them places they could not go to in any other way. It can take them on adventures to places they could never see and cause them to feel and experience things they could have never felt. Reading is a crucial key to so many of life's greatest experiences.
Chapter ten's emphasis on fluency drives this point home to me. As students learn to read fluently and build their comprehension, reading becomes an even more personal experience for them. I know that my readers in my tutoring group definitely are struggling with fluency, but I think that it is because they are struggling with phonemic awareness, which is an essential precursor to fluent reading. I look forward to helping them build their skills in phonemic awareness so that they can later become more fluent readers!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the reading. I can identify with you about wondering which is the best area of the big five to focus on with my students. Just like you have experienced, many of the activities that we will do in our lessons will overlap in different areas of the big five, which causes me to hope that we are actually building in all areas in some way or another over the summer. Keep up the good work!
This chapter about fluency really reminded me of my daughter when she was in 2nd grade, her teacher asked her to practice reading with feeling and changing her voice as my daughter put it. At the time I just thought okay whatever, but after listening to her read this way I could tell a huge difference in her understanding of the text. I would notice that she would go back through a sentence and change the way she read it after reading through it once and reading it incorrectly. Before listening to her read was somewhat challenging but afterwards it was almost enjoyable. I definitely saw how this changed her reading skills for the better. I really found the examples in the text helpful to understand how important having these skills are to interpret the text. Reading through them without punctuation really showed how the meaning could change so much. It makes sense why these children are having a hard time comprehending what they read. I liked what the author said about using dialogue to practice with. I noticed that my son’s teacher this year did a lot of reading through short plays with the children, now I can see that this would help them practice expressive reading. I would think this would allow them to see how it works easier than just reading a book. I can see also how direct instruction will be very necessary to help students understand how it can change the meaning of the text and make reading more enjoyable. I can still hear my daughter’s monotone voice droning on as my eyes glazed over and I prayed for the story to end, if I only knew then what I know now.
ReplyDeleteTo begin this chapter, I would just like to quote one of the first sentences. "Fluency, the ability to read with the intended interpretation of the author, is a critical but often neglected component of reading instruction" (Devries text, page 253). Whenever I think about fluency, I do not think, "I am understanding what the author is telling me?" Instead I think, "Did I understand all of that?" This is probably one of the reasons why it is so important to know information about the author. Having background information about the author and what his/her life has been about leading up to that point, you will be able to read the text more fluently. This sentence really made me stop and think for a moment. I enjoyed the section on automaticity (mostly because that wasn't a word I had really heard of before). Basically, you need to be able to coordinate many complex subskills and strategies. This will determine your level of automaticity. Something to help students in this area is helping them to recognize and read sight words. Sight words are so important and in my opinion, is one of the reasons why reading to children from one on is so important. This is going to get me on a rant, sorry everyone!!
ReplyDeleteMy mom ALWAYS read to us kids before we went to bed at night. And if she had time and we had the desire, she would read to us at other times as well. If she couldn't read because she had house work to do or other things occupying her time, she would have one of us older kids read to the younger kids. When I got into middle school and high school, my younger siblings always asked me to read book (which normally turned into 'just' one more). This is one of the simplest joys we can give our children and I fear that television is taking over the reading time in most American homes. One of the questions I asked my tutor students was if they got read to at home. And, they said no (both of my students didn't pass reading last year). I do not intend to blame parents for their children having problems with reading, but I feel that parents do play a huge role in their children's success. If this is in fact true, could this also mean there is a possibility they have a role in the children's failure? I understand that some parents do everything they can and the child doesn't succeed still, but when I hear things like this, I do not feel the parents are doing everything they can to help their children. Okay, off my rant now!
This chapter was actually pretty short, but again had a lot of information. I enjoyed the sections that explained teaching the children how to fluently read the text using punctuation, expression, and phrasing. It is amazing how each of these can change the meaning of a sentence. Calmly saying a sentence and then shouting the same sentence can turn that character into being upset. This is also why we as teachers need to read read alouds prior to class so we can model for the students how to read fluently and use the right tone of voice for each sentence.
I would also like to repeat Ms. Stoppel's statement in class for anyone reading this blog: the back of this book is a huge tool for us as the appendixes are full of information and activities and there is also an instructional materials section (Appendix D) that is full of word cards, bingo game cards, and graphic organizers. I might try to incorporate some of these into my lessons the next week!! I hope everyone is having a great week (unfortunately, my students didn't show up Monday for tutoring)!
Jenni: Thanks for sharing! It can get boring listening to beginning readers (I have sat through many siblings reading to me). However, it is nice to hear that the teacher is trying to help them. Monotone is never the way to go with reading, even non-fiction. I have noticed that when I read silently, even, I am thinking expressively or using the punctuation marks to think as to what the author was conveying. Maybe I need to find ways to do this with non-fiction to make it more interesting as that is one of my least enjoyable things to read! Anyway, loved hearing about your experience!
ReplyDeleteSusanna, I agree with you a short chapter but so important and good. Personally I enjoyed your rant though it stepped on my toes a little, in a good way. My oldest son loved to be read to from a young age and loved books. Now as a 12 year old he doesn’t enjoy reading as much as I’d like, but it is really easy for him. I do see how the amount of time him and I spent with books did influence his literacy success. He knew his alphabet early and was always very good at expressing what he thought was going on in the books. My daughter who was next never wanted to sit long enough for a whole book, I had to fight her to stay. My next son came when she was 18 months old and I was a little overwhelmed with a 3 year old, 18 month old and the newborn in a new town. So this was not a battle that I fought, however I have regretted it. My daughter as I said in my post struggles a little in reading and I worry that it was because of the lack of me reading to her. I do think that it would have helped her, fortunately she has had awesome teachers and they have brought her up to speed. Unfortunately as a parent you make many mistakes but you just do your best at the time and you try to learn from your mistakes. I’m impressed with your mother’s dedication to reading what a great example you had.
ReplyDeleteWhat I have noticed in the schools is that the majority of children that are not read to have parents that quite possibly are not strong readers themselves which makes it frustrating for them. I am looking for ideas for what we can do as educators to assist these families. One idea I came up with is maybe having books on CD, podcast, etc… however, you would have to make sure the family has the technology to play these items. This way the student could listen to the book with the parent and then maybe the teacher could ask for the parent to ask certain questions about the story to the student and then write the answers down or record them. Just an idea, if you all have any others I would love to hear them.
I am working on fluency with my tutoring students so this chapter was very beneficial to me. I think the phonograms that we are learning and reviewing each day are helping the boys tremendously. My tutoring students had a lesson in reading expressively last week. I audio taped them while reading a passage after demonstrating how the passage should be expressively read. The students listened to themselves as they tried to read the passage expressively. They enjoyed hearing their own voices and realized that they were not noticing punctuation or reading with very much expression at all. I love the story, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything and am going to read it next week to my students and maybe have them try reading it expressively. I also want to try to have my tutoring students assess each other using a checklist while partner reading. There are always great activities at the end of each chapter. I found a book of poetry at my local library that I would like to share with my students next week; then maybe the students could try the poetry party mentioned at the end of this chapter before tutoring sessions end.
ReplyDeleteLacey Keller
ReplyDeleteAs like many of you have stated, this chapter was short, but it was compact! What I got out of this chapter is that students need to be able to read fluently so they can comprehend and appreciate the material.
I love, love, love the reader's theater that is often found in our elementary classrooms. As a para, I often am in charge of creating costumes for the students. It is amazing to me that when they put on the costumes how easily some students can become that character! However, on the other hand, some students "lock-up" and cannot play the character. I remember being in charge of a group of second grade students, and I would first model the expression. The students seemed to do much better after listening to me. Fluency is definitely a skill that must be carefully tended to throughout the school year.
Melissa,
ReplyDeleteGreat idea on recording the students to increase fluency! And, it also brought in the use of technology :) I am glad you can do this with your group and have your boys respond to such activities. I also think you have a great set-up with poetry for next week. Best of luck to you!
As I read the chapter about fluency.. I really tried to place myself in a strugglinng readers shoes. This is one concept of reading that can be so hard. I love the non sense words. When I worked in Title I reading we would allow the students to create their own non sense sentences using the non sense words. They loved it! Although fluency is tough, the teaching strategies are numerous and it can be a lot of fun. I also use a lot of echo reading with the students I am tutoring. I think any time you can model is great. I also really enjoyed reading about expression. This gives students a chance to really get involved with the reading. Fluency is one of my favorite concepts to teach and this chapter had a lot of great strategies and really gave me a better understanding of how to teach this!
ReplyDeleteMelissa: I use a recorder. I think it is the best way to assess their proogress. I really enjoyed the way you used the recording in term of expression! What fun! I might have to borrow your idea! I think my boys would love that!
ReplyDeleteI was excited to see that Chapter ten is on fluency sense that is my goal with fourth graders. I loved how the author explained how fluency and comprehension go hand in hand under the reciprocal theory. I noticed that the WCPM based on grade level was different than the CFC text. This text says 128 for 4th graders but I guess that's only five more words than the CFC text. The text reminded teachers to have the student skip the word and finish reading the sentence in order to figure the word out. I need to make sure I am doing this and teaching skills to decode words and not giving the word to the student. This was a good reminder. With readers struggling with fluency the text said to make short term goals that can quickly be accomplished. There are activities on the fcrr.org website that I think would be great for accomplishing this task. Students can record their WPM for five or so reads and see the progress they are making. There is even a printable graph to chart progress. My students last semester loved seeing their progress on those graphs! They wanted to go up, up, up every time they read! Right now I am struggling with my most fluent reader shouting out the correct word when my dis-fluent reader pauses or makes a mistake. Any ideas on how to correct this? I just keep telling him that I know it's hard but we need to let him figure it out. I didn't realize all of the components of fluency before reading this chapter. I know of rate, automaticity, and expression but I hadn't heard of prosody before. I'm glad the text gave six different websites on page 272 for readers theatre scripts because I want to do this with my students. On page 269 there is a fluency log and I think this is a great idea to get the parents involved! I've been looking for something like this. This was a great chapter and I'm going to go back and read through the tutoring strategies again and try to use as many as possible!
ReplyDeleteIn response to lanewberry:
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked in Title 1 I also had students create their own nonsense words but I never thought about creating their own nonsense sentences! I'm sure they loved this idea!
In response to Melissa G.:
ReplyDeleteI really want to tape my students reading as well! Did you use a tape-recorder or your computer? I need to figure out how I want to do it because I think the students could benefit tremendously from hearing themselves. It sounds like yours did!
Desiree: I actually used the camcorder on my cell phone and just pointed it toward the book they were reading.
ReplyDeleteLanewberry:
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed working with my tutoring students on fluency. I keep pointing out the punctuation marks and trying to get them to tell me what an exclamation point is and how you read a sentence that has an exclamation point in it. I usually read the sentence first and show them how to read it with expression and sometimes they look at me like I am crazy!
This was a short chapter but packed with so much good information and I felt like I have a lot of “light bulb moments.” I am questioning my decision to make phonics my goal after taking into account how my students read and consider that this might be the source of their comprehension problems. This Chapter was full of useful information and activities to incorporate into lesson plans. I think they all are, but I am seeing how this chapter affects the students that I am working with. Some of the sections that stood out to me were Automaticity and the sub-sections: recognizing common words or sight words, recognizing letter/letter combinations and sounds, and recognizing chunks/syllables within words. I found it interesting that it points out that sometimes teacher’s encouragement actually interferes with student’s fluency/comprehension. I also thought the chapter did a good job and trying to explain just HOW inter-related fluency and comprehension are. As soon as one component increases, it feeds/increases the other one; and as soon as one component breaks down so does the other one. One of the things I appreciate about this text is how it points out the fluent and disfluent reader, just like it has pointed in other chapters (proficient and unskilled reader). I like this because it makes it easy to reference in the future and if I can find the table, I can then read more about the problem I am facing with students in the surrounding text.
ReplyDeleteDesiree: you made a couple points in your blog that I really agree with and appreciated. You mentioned you needed the reminder to have students skip the word, finish the passage and see if they can figure it out. I needed reminded of that as well. Another thing I liked that you pointed out was about making the short term goals that students can reach easily! I think this applies to any goals we make this summer with students and I was really glad you pointed it out again. I have some problems with students giving answers too quickly as well, and I don't have an answer for you about that.
ReplyDeleteI am a firm believer in what the book stated about reading being like any other skill. The more someone practices the easier reading becomes. I have seen this with my own child. She struggled with reading at first so I had her read all the time at home. She is amazing at reading now for her age. While I am tutoring I am seeing students who do not read often at all. They are lagging behind their peers and if they would just read more they would be right where they need to be. The thing is I don't know if most working parents are aware of what they need to do to work with their children. Being in the school system has really helped me understand what I need to do to be active in my daughters education. It goes so much further than just the classroom. Yes the teacher is very important but that does not take any responsibility off of the parent. They need to be just as active and concerned about their child's progress.
ReplyDeleteMy goal is fluency and I enjoyed reading about fluency in this chapter. I have ordered all the books that were referred to in class. They are "Partner Poem in Building Fluency, Reading,
Writing, and Word Walls, and Teaching Struggling Readers with Poetry." They are very helpful and very interesting to read.
I am also reminding students about punctuation and how their voice should sound if there is an exclamation point or question mark. If students don't observe punctuation, the book states that comprehension breaks down. I have noticed this in my tutoring sessions also.
Carrie H--The chapter was very informational and I had light bulb moments also. I like all the information and know I want to keep fluency as my goal. I am glad it helped you re-think some things. Our minds are forever churning aren't they?
ReplyDeleteWhile being a para, I have noticed many times children trying to be the first one to finish reading a passage. Most of the children that try to read fast, do not comprehend the passage as well for readers who are trying to understand what the story or passage is trying to say. Most of the time, teachers will ask questions about what their students have just read, or have a worksheet to go along with the passage. If a student hurries through the passage, he or she will have to go back and re-read to answer the questions.
ReplyDeleteRecognizing common words or sight words is a big step for children in learning how to read. There are many words with exceptions when it comes to sounding out words. I think it is important for children to master a set of sight words before they read a passage so they will not get confused when seeing words such as have, done, live and come. Phonograms should also come automatically and is a part of automaticity. If the student is trying to sound out shell, it is crucial they recognize the sh go together in order to pronounce the word correctly.
I also have seen other peers or teacher automatically give a child the correct way to say a word rather than giving the child strategies to sounding out the word. It is beneficial for the child to become a better reader. A peer or teacher telling them the word is not helping them learn how to read.
I use echo reading while tutoring this summer. The kids enjoy hearing me read something with expression while they repeat the same thing back with the same expression. I have also used flash cards with a word on it from our story that the students may not understand. They take turns putting the words on the tri-fold.
Melissa H-I agree with you about the parents being just as involved as the teacher. I have noticed in the school system I work in, many things get sent home for the students parents to read with them or go over with them. I wonder how many parents actually do the work with their children or just sign it and put it back in their book bags. I have seen many times where the child's book bag does not even get opened for up to a week because the same papers or books are in the bag. It's sad to think about but everyone knows it happens. Parents should care about their child's education just as much as their teacher.
ReplyDeleteASPEN RANK – CHAPTER 10
ReplyDeleteThe beginning of this chapter introduced the idea that there are several different definitions of fluency, in fact, in this text there are seven. However, despite the fact that there are seven different definitions of fluency one thing they all seemed to agree on is the idea of the reciprocal theory. This theory “suggests the relationship between fluency and comprehension is reciprocal rather than unidirectional” and that “as the reader is able to comprehend more material, her fluency increases, because the brain does not need to slow down to process the print. And when the reader can read fluently, her brain is free to focus on comprehension.” I find that this theory is really important for us, as teachers, to learn about fluency and I feel that this is important for us to share this idea with our students. They should be taught to understand that the more they read and the better they get at it the easier it will become to them in both ways, with fluency and comprehension. Reading further through the chapter, the author discussed the different components of fluency including rate, automaticity (“the ability to engage and coordinate a number of complex subskills and strategies with little cognitive effort”), phrasing or prosody, expression and punctuation. Of all these components I can see how they are important, not one more than the other, however I also see that each of the components can become dependent on another one. I can definitely see how punctuation can affect expression and how rate can affect expression and phrasing. I also can see how our read alouds can really affect a child’s fluency skills, the expression we use when we read and the correct phrasing can be a great example for our students reading abilities.
The assessments in this chapter were very similar to those in the other chapters, especially by encouraging the rubrics and miscue analyses. As for the intervention section of this chapter (the section I always look most forward too), there were several ideas I know I will utilize for my next set of lesson plans. For example, the echo reading strategy is one I have observed before in my internship classroom and also one that I strategy that I don’t believe is difficult to utilize! I also like the choral reading strategy! I have dog-earred this page, as I know I’m going to utilize this strategy as well.
RE: MELISSA HOWARD
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that reading is much like any other skills in that it becomes easier the more you practice and do it. Although my daughter is only three, I can already see the impact of me reading to her. She is already understand that certain words go with certain pictures, certain expressions are expressed throughout stories and much more. I think it is so sad that there are students out there who don’t enjoy reading because they struggle in so many ways. It is so important for parents and teachers to recognize their students’ struggles in reading because it can affect their lives in so many ways. Struggling in reading can affect more content areas than just reading, math, science and social studies are just a few of the areas that would be affected in a negative way if a student struggles with fluency and the other of the Big 5. Great post!
The students that I am working with are working on fluency. I really enjoyed the chapter because it gave me some helpful ideas for the students. I am going to use poetry this week with my students. The book gives some activities to do with the students and I am going to try a few of them. So far I have done the echo reading and flash cards. The next thing I am going to do is the poetry party. The students like listening to poems so I am going to use that to my advantage. The book also has websites to find poetry so I found that very helpful. On Tuesday July 5 I used the fluency fleeting phrases and the students really wowed me. The first and second time they went through the phrase they read 11 in one minute. I put both sets together and let them do it a third time and one student read 21 phrases correctly and the other read 20. I was so proud of them and they could tell I was proud and I could see how excited they got. I have about 50 more phrases for them because they were asking if they could do it again or take them home to show their parents.
ReplyDeleteCarrie H
ReplyDeleteI agree this chapter was full of some great information. I enjoyed reading about sight words, recognizing letter/letter combinations and sounds, and recognizing chunks/syllables within words. Any information I can get to help these students I am all for. This is definitely a chapter that I am going to go back over and read again.
Alexandra Westfall
ReplyDeleteChapter 10
First of all - wow! I had no idea there were so many parts to fluency and how many sub-parts to those parts there are! After reading this chapter, I got a real understanding on how important fluency is for comprehension (referring to the reciprocal theory). Another part of this chapter that was interesting to read was the impact the instruction has on fluency. I liked seeing the differences in instruction of fluent readers and instruction of disfluent readers. That aspect of the chapter may have the biggest impact on how I teach my students in the future.
Re: Cody (George P.)
I smiled as I read your post. It's so exciting to see them actually making progress! I think it's really awesome that you are including poetry in your fluency lesson plans. I think the structure and rhythm of poems will really help what your trying to do.
Fluent readers can recognize words and quickly decode unknown words. Chapter ten explains that there are multiple definitions of fluency. Fluency contains four major components. These four components are rate, automaticity, prosody, and expression. One of my students has a difficult time with responding to punctuation. Therefore, I really liked reading more about teaching students to read with expression by looking at the punctuation being used.
ReplyDeleteChapter ten also points out the process of guessing a reader's fluency. I really like the checklist in appendix C.41. The checklist consists of the four stages of reading fluency. There are many types of strategies for reading fluency that can be done individually or in small groups.
Reply Alexandra:
ReplyDeleteI feel the same as you! I had no idea so much went into fluency and how important it is. This chapter really helped me because my overall goal is fluency. I got some great ideas and plan on using this chapter for guidance through the rest of my tutoring. It was very neat to see the differences of instruction for fluent vs. non-fluent readers.
Since I chose fluency as the goal for my tutoring students I found this chapter to be very helpful. I found myself really taking a look at chart 10.1. These were the traits of fluent and disfluent readers. I found myself thinking about the traits that my tutoring students had and where they kind of fit. It also helped me find a more item to pinpoint with each of my students.
ReplyDeleteI also found the information about students who read word-to-word and the reason they read this way. A lot of that is because of poor instruction. They are asked to read aloud more often and they are interrupted more often. As I think back to things I have done with students I probably haven’t given some of them as much time as I should have. I should give them more time to work out words. I also think if they are reading in a group of students they know if they pause that someone will just tell them the word and they won’t have to try. It’s nice of the students to want to help out but it may not be the best for their classmate.
Alexandra-
ReplyDeleteI also liked to see the ways that different instruction had an impact on students. I like to hear of ways that work and don't work so you have an idea of items that you should or shouldn't do with your students.
I think it is common sense that fluency and comprehension go hand in hand. If a student doesn’t know HOW to read the passage, how could they be expected to comprehend it?
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of “rate”, the text stated that 4th graders read at a pretty slow rate. I student taught 4th grade last semester and when we did the 1 minute timings, the boys read for speed. This led to many words mispronounced or skipped. I was constantly lecturing the class on reading for fluency and that when we read fast, we aren’t reading fluently. The girls read at a slower rate. Boys are competitive, that is probably a huge factor in their reading.
I did notice with most of the students in my class that they didn’t respond to punctuation.
My favorite thing was at the end of the day I read to the class. It was just a free read where we picked a book and I read it. No questions, just a story. When I read I modeled constantly punctuation and expression. I really got into reading the stories we read! During our guided reading time I constantly “promoted” punctuation. We would stop and I would go back and ask them what mark they see there. If there was an explanation point I asked them what they think that meant. Then I had them go back and re-read the sentence again, showing that expression. They had fun with it because it gave them a chance to get loud. I wanted them to read with expression and be animated. I don’t think enough work is done in the classroom on punctuation anymore, just my opinion.
Jessica-
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a very good point-“they read more often and are interrupted more often.” Interruptions happen all the time and it can’t be beneficial to a student. They lose track of where they are and of any comprehension they may have had. The biggest problem I see is other students shout out the word that the reader is struggling with. That is one thing I have struggled with. How do you prevent that? I have found myself over and over again telling students that we need to let them figure it out but it still happens.
After reading chapter 10, I realized that my goal should have been fluency and not comprehension even though the test said my student’s scores in fluency were right on. Now I see why comprehension and fluency go hand in hand. Furthermore, there were many parts of the chapter that stood out to me, but the one that I have thought about the most was about fluent readers know when to slow down. For the timed test, my students did an outstanding job. They were either advanced or at the high, ready for instruction level. However, I didn’t calculate if they were pausing for the comma, stopping at the periods, etc. I was just focused on how far they read and their mistakes. Now I feel like I have a better understanding of what I should have done with my students. Luck fully, I was doing fluent activities along with comprehension, but I believe the student may have excelled even more by improving their fluency skills. I guess teaching is like reading; we gradually attain new information, practice it, apply it, and scaffold even more new information onto what we just learned to improve our skills! Then I would like to add that the activities at the end of the chapter are very resourceful, I tried the echo read, but I found out, having two students on IEP’s all they want to do is individual work. So this activity wasn’t as successful as I would have liked it to be.
ReplyDeleteResponse to Lacey Keller:
Thank you for sharing. I too enjoy the reader’s theater, but even though I have planned it within my lesson, I don’t think I’m going to be able to fit it within my tutor session. My goal is comprehension and not fluency, so the reader’s theater is just an extra activity that I had planned if time permitted. There just seems like we have to do so many other things and all I want to do, is let them have fun learning. Well, hopefully in the fall, I can have the students do a reader’s theater as I student teach!
This chapter goes great with my goal of comprehension. Reading this chapter makes me want to go back and reread the chapters on comprehension, well okay I am going to go back and reread it! I was refreshed on what I know from reading this chapter and learned a few things too. Fluency is more then just being able to correctly read the material or text at hand. It is the ability to read with the intended interpretation of the author (DeVries text pg 253). My favorite part of this section, well I guess it is the same in each chapter, is the Assessment part. Learning new ways to assess students is great. I also believe that I will get a lot of use out of figure 10.9 on page 263. I am going to link those to the comprehension strategies to help my students.
ReplyDeleteNöelle Pohl VC
ReplyDeleteChapter 10: DeVries Text
Chapter 10; to me brought the one of the most important BIG 5: Fluency. As fluency + comprehension drive understanding…that being said; the fluent learning skills of recognizing, associating, meanings, chunks, expressions, punctuations, echo reading, oral recitation are ALL clues to help drive the fluent understand of HOW a work looks then sounds to the student learner. Now these three things: phoneme awareness, automatic decoding skills, and practice you probably already knew before you came to this course. But there are two or three areas that you might not know that can contribute mightily to the development of fluency. First, vocabulary development: the more WE as future teachers know about a word, the faster you can read it. If you don’t know what a word means, it can slow your system down. One of the easiest most rewarding contributions you can make to make our student’s growth of fluency beginning with WORD KNOWLEDGE! As fluency is the developmental process that connects decoding with everything we know about words to make the meaning of the text come to life. Fluency is a WONDERFUL bridge to comprehension (as stated above) and to a lifelong love of reading. As we focus on the examples about the building blocks of fluency: rate, automaticity, prosody and expression help the reader to see; literally clearer in the understanding of what is important to remember here…if we teach the connections between types of word knowledge. EXPLICITLY teach spelling, vocabulary, suffixes, and grammar. We must remember: “Teach words, words, words.” (Use word walls as we have discussed in lecture and have on our Tri-Folds) Teach accuracy, and then give opportunities to move to fluency: Use partner reading, read to them yourselves, use repeated reading techniques for stories. These steps I use and follow in my lesson plans and hope of one day in my classroom!
George P-- I love your ideas with poetry. I too am going to us poetry. I am planning on doing that this coming week! Hope you don't mind but I might have to borrow a few of your ideas and change them up to meet the needs of my students!!!!
ReplyDeleteN. Poh VC
ReplyDeleteReply to Jessica C,
As I stated in my post: Fluency + Comprehension=the MAIN purpose for ALL reading…that being said, the traits of fluent and diffluent readers IS promenade in all aspects of our educational experiences. I feel we as pre-service teachers can take these experiences of tutoring and as you said PINPOINT the areas our students are struggling in...As fluency drives comprehension based skills with rate and automaticity; fulfilling ALL aspects of the component learning experience must also be our goal.
Nöelle Pohl
I think that fluency is important, but I also think that comprehension is more important. Fluency and comprehension coincide with each other like a team. One of the students I am tutoring reads quite slow for her grade level, yet she still is able to comprehend everything she has read. Sometimes I am able to read what I would call quickly but not remember anything I read. I can also remember sitting in class listening to all the other students read and how quickly they were reading. I knew that I could not read as fast as they could and so that is all I focused on was trying to be more efficient while reading. I wanted to read as fast or faster than my classmates. When I did that is when I started struggling with comprehension. I guess that point I am trying to make is that fluency when combined with comprehension is a perfect combination. With practice and proper balance of learning each at the appropriate rate, students will be able to read at a faster rate and remember their reading material.
ReplyDeleteAssessments are one of the best tools to use for teaching fluency because most likely they will read words that they have difficulty with and will allow you, the teacher, to see what needs to be worked on. The miscue analysis has been very valuable while tutoring. I really like that two activities “Tape, Check, Chart.” I think it is a fun way for students to increase their fluency reading. It gives them a goal of something to work towards.
Noelle,
ReplyDeleteI think this is the best math formula I have seen: fluency + comprehension drive understanding. That is exactly right. I think that comprehension brings understanding but students must learn to read and comprehend at the same time.
In talking with one of my mentors today about teaching, she mentioned to me that the goal of reading teachers is to inspire students by teaching them that reading can take them places they could not go to in any other way. It can take them on adventures to places they could never see and cause them to feel and experience things they could have never felt. Reading is a crucial key to so many of life's greatest experiences.
ReplyDeleteChapter ten's emphasis on fluency drives this point home to me. As students learn to read fluently and build their comprehension, reading becomes an even more personal experience for them. I know that my readers in my tutoring group definitely are struggling with fluency, but I think that it is because they are struggling with phonemic awareness, which is an essential precursor to fluent reading. I look forward to helping them build their skills in phonemic awareness so that they can later become more fluent readers!
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts on the reading. I can identify with you about wondering which is the best area of the big five to focus on with my students. Just like you have experienced, many of the activities that we will do in our lessons will overlap in different areas of the big five, which causes me to hope that we are actually building in all areas in some way or another over the summer. Keep up the good work!