Chapter ten focuses on fluency. Prior to taking our reading and language arts courses I did not realize the importance of fluency when reading. When I look back on it now, I do not understand how I could have taken fluency for granted! Last semester I interned with second graders and one of the girls that I worked with had a very difficult time with fluency. Her struggles with fluency interfered with her ability to comprehend the material she was reading. It was also emotionally stressful for her. This is one reason that I feel round robin reading is not an effective program. She would have been completely turned off, and literally panicked if she had to experience a program like round robin reading. There are eight principles that the book feels teachers should use to guide fluency instruction. All of the eight principles are extremely important. It is important to expose students to fluent reading. When they can hear readers read with expression and appropriate pace they will benefit. I also think it is important to provide students with repeated readings and easy readings when they are learning to read with fluency. Books that are at a student’s instructional level will be very difficult to read with fluency when students are struggling. One strategy that my mentor teacher used was to record students reading a book at the beginning of the year. She would then set a goal or a specific date where she would have the student read the same book into the recorder. The students would then go back and listen to their first recording. After listening to the first recording they would listen to the second. The student could then hear the achievements they have made. I think that this gives students a goal to look forward to. They are also able to hear their own success. I also think that reader’s theatre is a great method for improving fluency. When using this method it is important that students are given time to practice their part silently. When students go into a reader’s theatre and they are acting out the script for the first time aloud they may struggle. This can lead to student embarrassment which will make reader’s theatre a threatening activity. Fluency is important because it affects many different components in the reading process. I think that all of the strategies should be tried in the classroom if a student is struggling with fluency. We must get our students excited about reading if we want them to be successful.
In response to Jaclyn: I really like what your mentor teacher did. I think letting a child hear their own success is a great idea. If they can see that they are improving, they are going to want to try to do even better.
Fluency is the topic of chapter 10. Rate, automaticity, phrasing, and expression are the four components of fluency. Fluency is important because it goes along with all of the other Big 5. Without fluency, students are too focused on the word and not what they text they are reading means. When a child reads with fluency, they not only read the words correctly, they read at a good pace, with expression. The author of a book wants you to really see the story how they do, so you should be expressive when reading. Punctuation is something that is also very important when reading. The reader should recognize the punctuation and take the appropriate action. If a reader skips over a period, they are running two completely different sentences together and they will not understand the meaning of what they just read. I also like the activity fluency developmental lesson. I like the flow of this lesson and how it works with all students in the group.
Brandy, I worked with second graders last semester and I experienced the effects of poor fluency on all areas of the big five with many students. The students also lacked the self-confidence to even begin trying to read because they were aware of their struggles. I agree that fluency is such an important factor in students' understanding of the reading material.
Fluency is not just reading at a rapid/good rate. It also consists of expression, phrasing, and automaticity. I personally think that fluency and comprehension can go together very well, if a child is spending all the time trying to read the words correctly they can loose the meaning of the text. I had a mentor teacher for Reading methods that focused on fluency at the end of every lesson. No matter what the students had read that day they then reread it and focused on fluency. She used echo reading quite a bit in her class and I can see the benefits to it. The other idea towards the end of the chapter was readers theatre, what a great way to incorporate emotion/phrasing into the reading.
I agree that punctuation is a key part of fluency. I wonder if it is the part most overlooked by many. Knowing when to take a breath, pause for effect, etc.. is crucial to reading with fluency.
Also, I agree when the students are completely focused on the words they are loosing what the author is trying portray in the story.
I loved how my mentor teacher would have the students echo read it was a great way for her to model how to read and the students caught on quickly.
“Comprehension is the main purpose for all reading, and fluency is important for comprehension.”Fluency has four major components, rate, automaticity, prosody and expression. Both of my tutoring students had great fluency while reading from the assessment text. But, I’ve noticed in my guided reading sections, they aren’t that great. They’re not horrible, but they read right through the punctuation marks and don’t comprehend what they just read . Mrs. Stoppel gave a great example in class about punctuation and how changing the punctuation changes the feel of the sentence. This is something I am going to have my students do in one of their lessons. I also think the PPPP Strategy (page 265) is a great activity and something else I want to include in my tutoring sessions. Our goal is comprehension, but like the book states, you can’t have comprehension without fluency. Last semester in my reading internship class, my mentor teacher used Reader’s Theatre. The students loved this activity and it helped them tremendously. She had a lot of low level readers and the repeated practice of reading the text and listening to other students reading fluently really helped those that were struggling.
In response to Brandy, I totally agree with you that punctuation is really important. I notice both in my tutoring sessions and even in my internship classes the students reading right through the sentences. When they read through the sentence and onto the next sentence, they lose the entire meaning of the passage.
Fluency is important for reading. Comprehension is the main goal for reading and if a reader is not fluent they are spending all of their energy reading the words instead of comprehending the text. There are several methods to improve fluency. Reader's theatre, choral reading, repeated readings, chunking text, and many others listed in the text. Fluency includes reading with expression, reading rate, recognizing chunks in words, and phrasing. There are many activities that students will enjoy listed at the back of the text. I am working with fluency in my tutoring group. There are many activities that I have used from the Florida State site, and also from the text. The students typically enjoy doing the activities and they don't even realize that they are working to improve their fluency.
In response to Christine D. I have also seen students enjoying reader's theater. They enjoy practicing their parts and putting on a show. In my tutoring group I used a poem to read for several sessions. The students would gain speed and expression every time they read it. It was a short poem and this took very little time.
Janet, I agree that fluency is extremely important for success in reading. I have been using a lot of different activities from the FCRR website too. My main focus is vocabulary and I have found that the students really enjoy most of the activities and they have learned so much from them.
I’ll bet watching the Reader’s Theatre was a lot of fun. I would have enjoyed watching that. My mentor teacher last year used read aloud where she read a chapter, then assigned the next chapter to read. She gave the student’s time to read in class (5th grade) and the next morning gave a verbal 5 question quiz to make sure the students finished reading the chapter. (Many of the students were not reading the assignment. This solved that problem really quick.
Chapter 10 discusses how fluency is important to reading yet comprehension is important to fluency. If a student does not comprehend what they are reading, all their energy is wasted on decoding the text. I have noticed in my tutoring class of 1st graders that they don’t know how to use punctuation yet. I am trying to explain it to them, but they are still spending too much time trying to get the words right.
In my tutoring sessions, we have tried the Echo reading, but the students butt in if they know the words coming up. We are working on this and they are getting better. I am going to try the PPPP Strategy activity listed on pg. 265 and see how that works in my tutoring session.
I have been doing some echo reading with my own daughter during her reading time at home. She struggles with her reading not because she can’t read but because is so afraid of being wrong or called out, that she would rather act as if she can’t do it. Echo reading has been a huge help with her while reading at home. She is gaining the much needed courage to participate at school during guided reading time, since we started echo reading with her. I absolutely love CARBO recorded book method. I used this method while teaching for headstart in my listening center. My classroom all spoke a second language and English was not a primary language spoke in their home and they had very little English. My listening centers consisted of all my recorded tapes in both English and in Spanish. As the year progress I was amazed with the fluency level in both languages from my students. I just started doing this with my own daughter and she really enjoys this tapes. Something I want to do is have her participate with me in reading so that she can hear herself read too. Deb, my daughter did that until I made her lips! I enlarged funny lips and had her decorate them and then we glued them to a popsicle stick! So while I am reading the passage her lips are in front of her face. When she is reading the passage my lips are in front of my face! I am anxious to hear from you how PPPP strategy works with you!
Chapter 10 is all about fluency which is an important aspect of any competent reader. While comprehension is the main purpose of reading, fluency is an important part of reading for comprehension. I found the reciprocal theory on page 254 to be an important thing to remember when working with students who struggle with either fluency or comprehension. The chapter provides a number of definitions of fluency and provides many examples of traits of fluent readers. I am using fluency as my goal for tutoring and have worked on several of these traits throughout my sessions. In my work in the classroom and in my tutoring sessions, I have noticed that expression and punctuation seem to be difficult for many students. In my internship class the students break up into workshops to provide assistance with different reading difficulties. One strategy I noticed my teacher use for working with punctuation is to require students to tap their pencil or finger at the end of each sentence. This requires them not only to pay attention to periods, exclamation points, and question marks, but to pause at these punctuation marks as they tap the table. This seems to work very well with most students and they have definitely increased their ability to pause for punctuation. I really enjoyed reading the fluency activities in the chapter and plan to include a fluency development lesson in my future tutoring sessions.
Response to Christine D: I think the PPPP strategy can definitely be helpful in working with punctuation during your tutoring sessions. Reading fluently will certainly help your overall goal of comprehension. I think Reader’s Theatre is a great activity to help students work on fluency. In my internship class last semester the students really loved this activity and it seemed to help those in need of additional instruction in fluency.
Fluency, the topic of chapter 10, has many different definitions to what it is. The definitions range from speed to pitch. There are four major components that make fluency what it is. These components are rate, automaticity, phrasing/prosody, and expression. You do not what students to read as fast as possible without using the other components because in the long run they will not be comprehending. Even though this chapter was a shorter one, I took many fluency ideas from it. One was on page 266, called "Tape, Check, Chart". It is like the student is assessing themselves, and get to see how and where they are having problems. They can fix any mistakes they are having this way. By doing the activity multiple times, the student can keep track of their growth. Fluency is one of my favorite aspects in reading as a reader. I like using expression and making the story interesting. I do not see too many students using this in the everyday classroom, but my students in tutoring are good with their fluency skills.
In response to Tyler G.: I agree when you say students struggle with punctuation and expression. It is almost like getting through the story as fast as possible. One way a teacher told me is a good technique is by having the students read Dr. Seuss books to work on these aspects of fluency. How do they students do with commas?
I think students will love the Tape, check, Chart activity even if they don’t like reading just because they get to record themselves and then listen to it. Expression is what makes reading books fun and is what really gets young children excited about reading. Do you do activities to work on expression with your tutoring students?
Chapter 10 is about Fluency. In the text it provided several different definitions for the term fluency. The definition that I liked the most was, “The ability to read smoothly, easily and readily with freedom from word recognition problems and dealing with words and larger language units with quickness.” To me, that definition best sums up what fluency is all about. In the text it says that comprehension is the main purpose for all reading, and fluency is important for comprehension. This is evident in my tutoring sessions because I have several students who read very quickly, but when I ask them questions they often times stammer for the correct answer. The National Research Council Report states that one of the five necessary elements for effective early reading is fluency in all types of text. The four major components of fluency are: rate, automaticity, phrasing or prosody (they are easily interchangeable), and expression. I really felt like I understood everything this chapter discussed. The after school tutoring program has helped me better understand what reading is all about. If a student does not read fluently, is it possible for them to truly comprehend the text? I feel like a student can read fluently but not necessarily comprehend the text. I didn’t know if they were interchangeable? The book said that listening to students and using the informal assessment instruments are most helpful, and I would have to agree with that statement. Sometimes students freak out when they know they are being assessed. I think that there is a proper time and place for formal assessments, and I think with the younger students you should use less formal assessments. The activities at the end of the chapter are really beneficial, and I have found that most of them work really well. I have purchased several of the recordable books from Hallmark and have given them to some of the children I used to babysit. The parents said they have been a huge hit and have helped them tremendously!
The Reciprocal Theory is something that educators should definitely keep in mind. It is neat to see the stuff from the text put into action. In the after school program several of my students struggle with punctuation as well. It is like it doesn’t even exist to them, and they only pause when they need to take a breath. I really like the strategy that your teacher uses, and I may have to try it out for tutoring!
Chapter ten was all about fluency. I really liked the quote at the beginning of the chapter that said “comprehension is the main purpose for all reading, and fluency is important for comprehension.” This explains exactly why fluency is so important to readers. The chapter goes on to explain what fluency is and how to help students develop better fluency while reading. There were also examples of different types of fluency issues with students and how to help correct the issues. The chapter also talked about formal and informal assessments that can be used in the classroom to determine where students are with fluency. At the very end of the chapter the includes eight principles to guide reading fluency instruction in the classroom as well as fluency instruction tips for working with English Language Learners. I really liked this chapter and saw some of the examples related well with students in my tutoring group. I liked how the chapter explained what fluency actually is and what the specific parts of fluency are. It was also very helpful when the book gave examples of fluency problems and ideas on how to work with students to improve fluency while reading. I really liked the activities at the end of the chapter. The echo reading, preview-pause-prompt-praise, and fluency development lesson (FDL) activities were some of my favorites.
In response to Shelby…I also have students who struggle with comprehension and fluency. I liked how this chapter explained what fluency is and gave ideas and activities to use to help improve fluency. Participating in the after school tutoring has opened my eyes as well! Reading has always been so easy for me and I love it! It is important for teachers to be able to help their students in all areas of development and I am very glad for this opportunity to help students in a smaller group.
I have referred to this chapter already during our tutoring and have found the PPPP strategy on page 265 is helpful. It's difficult for me to find strategies that don't involved "Popcorn Reading." I was so used to doing this strategy in my elementary and high school years that it was hard to think of other strategies. It took my students a few tries to warm-up to the idea of all reading aloud together and they hold back from tapping on the table to read by themselves. Does anyone have any strategies they use for fluency or comprehension that really work during guided reading? I'm deciding whether to continue the PPPP Strategy or not...
If you are interested in the PPPP strategy I have tried it and it works well after the students gain confidence to read aloud with others. I put myself in their shoes and it's almost like reading passages together in Church. It's hard not to be monotone when it's all together but once you read a few paragraphs it tends to sync into one voice. I agree that during the chapter I could compare my tutoring students and gained many ideas for the final sessions we have together.
This chapter talked about fluency and I found this chapter to be so interesting! Since I'm working on fluency with my tutoring students I really liked looking deeper into fluency. The example at the beginning of the chapter reminded me exactly of my students because a couple of them can hardly pronounce words. I also really liked the section that talked about expression and punctuation because that's what we've been working on lately. I've been having my students re-read a passage if the expression isn't exactly correct. I thought the section that talked about formal and informal assessments was interesting and I'm sure i'll be referring back to those for tutoring. When I was looking at the intervention activities one that I really liked was the Oral Recitation Lesson. I'm doing activities with my students that are basically the same as this one and it seems to be really successful. I also liked the flash card idea and I think my students would like it as well. We've done a few activities with flash cards that usually lead into some sort of relay game that has seemed to interest the students. I loved all the ideas and strategies at the back of the chapter and I'll definitely be looking back at this chapter as my tutoring continues.
In response to Larissa, I'm glad to see that the PPPP strategy has worked for you and I'm sure I'll be trying it in the future. I have a very struggling reader and I think this strategy would work great for her. Thanks for sharing!
I really enjoyed reading chapter 10 because the focus of my tutoring group is on fluency. This chapter pointed out the components of fluency including rate, automaticity, phrasing, expression, and punctuation. I think it is important to teach students that fluency doesn’t necessarily mean reading fast, but reading at a smooth and steady rate. I also think it is important to teach students to pay attention to punctuation because this makes a big difference in comprehension. Chapter 10 also gave examples of traits of fluent versus disfluent readers (p. 255). For example, fluent readers use intonation to communicate the meaning of text, while disfluent readers lack expression. I knew that my students struggled with fluency but after reading the traits of disfluent readers I realized how many important skills they lack. During tutoring sessions we have done activities focusing on rate, we created bookmarks with automaticity tips, and we completed an activity using changes in punctuation to affect the meaning of the text. These next couple weeks I hope to focus on phrasing and expression. Through modeling and echo reading, I want to help my students better understand how phrasing and expression affects fluency and how it can make text more interesting and easier to comprehend.
In response to Holly D… Fluency is also the focus of my tutoring group. I have used the flash card idea as well and after students can recognize the word, I have them read high frequency phrases that contain the words. We just did an activity last week where I took high frequency words the students had been working on and put them into phrases. Next, I timed each student for a minute to see how many of the phrases they could read. The second time through I asked the students to try and beat their previous score. Inserting the words into phrases seems to have helped their fluency. I’m glad to hear that the Oral Recitation Lesson has worked for your students. I hope to try it in the future.
Chapter ten is all about fluency. I enjoyed reading this chapter because my goal is to improve fluency in third grade students. This chapter gave me some great information and ideas. Fluency is such a crucial piece in the reading process. I did not realize the importance of fluency until taking education courses here at Fort Hays. I found it interesting to read about the eight principles the author believes teachers should use to guide fluency instruction. One of the principles is exposing students to fluent reading. For many students just hearing what fluent reading sounds like can be very beneficial. For this reason, it is important to expose students to fluent reading. One strategy I have yet to use during tutoring, but would like to start doing is recording my students. All of my students struggled with fluency at the beginning of the semester but boy have they improved! I think using a recorder would be a great way for students to listen to themselves read passages and then determine where they are improving and what they still need to work on. Punctuation also plays an important role during fluency. By ignoring punctuation, a sentence can change dramatically. If readers skip over punctuation marks completely it can change the meaning of sentences which consequently leads to poor comprehension usually.
In response to Jaclyn, I loved what your mentor teacher did. I believe letting the students hear themselves reading is a great learning strategy. As you mentioned it also gives them a goal as they are always trying to improve. In my next few lessons, I would like to bring in my computer and use Audacity or use the recorder on my cell phone to record my students.
Brandy, Throughout tutoring, I have realized how big of a role punctuation play in fluency. At the beginning of the sessions, my students skipped right past the punctuation marks completely. Therefore, like you pointed out as well, comprehension was a struggle for my students because the meaning was not there.
Larissa, I have the PPPP strategy in some of my next lesson plans. I'm looking forward to trying it!
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron. Horace Mann
This quote jumped out at me because it’s exactly right. A student who isn’t inspired to learn won’t grow in their knowledge and are like cold iron because cold iron doesn’t change. In order to teach a student you need to inspire the student with a desire to learn because then the student is able to grow just like hot iron is able to be changed into anything that you desire.
I found this chapter really helpful on learning how to teach fluency. The scenario at the beginning of the chapter reminds me of listening to some students read because they read like the students in the scenario. I had no idea how to help those students read fluently and it seemed like the teacher didn’t either because they offered no help to the struggling student.
I really liked how the book gave several different definitions on what fluency is. It helped me better understand the meaning of fluency and why students have trouble with it.
I also spent some time looking through the intervention part of the chapter and I liked a lot of the activities in there. Some of the activities I have heard of (echo reading, preview-pause-prompt-praise, readers’ theatre, etc.) and there were a lot of activities that I have never heard of.
This chapter is a good chapter to keep in mind when you are working with your students on fluency. It can also help you on working with your students on fluency early so that they are not going to have to struggle with it later on in their schooling.
I totally agree with everything that you said. In my tutoring class I am working on fluency with my students and I can see how easily frustrated they are when they have to read. They are improving which is great.
Teachers need to take time to develop fluency because it leads to good comprehension. Students need to be fluent readers because if they aren't then they are not going to be good at ready and they will hate reading.
Chapter 10 is on fluency. Fluency is very important when reading. It talks about round robin reading as not being very effective, as it make the children read even those that have major reading struggles. This chapter presents 8 principles that teachers need to follow when instructing in fluency. Each and every one of the principles is important. There is not one that is more important over the others. If a child struggles with fluency, then they will have a hard time comprehending what they read. As teachers, we need to make sure when a student is learning to read, that we give them the easiest level of reading to make them feel comfortable. Fluency goes with all the other aspects of reading and comprehension. We need to make sure our students are enjoying the reading and not getting frustrated with it. When a student gets frustrated, they get turned off the reading more and more. We cannot let this happen. There are 4 important components for fluency, rate, automaticity, expression and phrasing. If we can get the students to achieve all these, they will become better readers.
In response to Janna Colson – I really like the little quote you stated in your post. That is so true. The definitions were very helpful to me as well. I guess I never knew there were so many different definitions for the same word.
Fluency should be a large part of every student’s reading skills practice because of its importance towards successful reading. When most individuals think about fluency, they only associate it with the speed of a student’s reading, but this is very wrong. Fluency is composed of four major components, these are rate, automaticity, prosody (phrasing), and expression. If students do not possess enough skills in each of these components to read fluently, they are considered to read with disfluency. When a student had disfluency, he/she may read slowly and not recognize words quickly enough, which will cause a drop in the student’s comprehension of the text. In my tutoring sessions, our main goal is comprehension, but I have worked on tying in skills practice on the fluency components as well. We’ve done vocabulary practice for automaticity, and we’ve worked on reading aloud for expression and prosody practice.
On page 257, the text shares an example of a teacher confirming a student’s correct pronunciation after every word; this is not going to help the student learn to read with phrasing, with being interrupted each time. Although, if a teacher rather encourages the student to simply skip an unknown word and continue to the end of the sentence, the teacher will be helping the student read fluently. The student and teacher can always go back to the unknown word after the sentence is read and try to figure out its meaning.
I know we have talked about the Preview-Pause-Prompt-Praise technique during class, but it was useful getting to read about it in the text as well. In fact, in this next week’s lesson plans. I plan on including this strategy to try it out!
In response to April B., I witnessed a teacher use round robin reading almost every day during an internship last semester, and it was obvious the students were not staying focused while other students were reading. I also noticed the students not enjoying reading aloud. I definitely agree with you when you state that teachers should go a level below the student’s instructional level when teaching the student to read. If the students do not feel comfortable reading at their instructional level, than the teacher is not going to be able to work on building up the student’s fluency skills, but perhaps maybe only succeed at frustrating the student with reading. I liked that you mentioned that we cannot let this frustration happen. It is important to help our students build their skills in the four major components of fluency, so they will become fluent, confident readers.
In response to Janel: Honestly, even with students I work with at the school, I make them have expression when needed during readings. I do this with my tutoring students if they are reading aloud. For all students when they come across any sort of expression, and don't read it how it should be said, I read it how it should sound and require them to before they can move on. I think it is very important!
In response to Christine D...I absolutely love seeing Reader's Theater in action and agree that it is a wonderful fluency builder. I have seen it used with great success in a 2nd grade classroom. I would love to try it with my tutoring group soon. Thanks for sharing! Julie
Chaper 10 has terrific recommendations on fluency. It is certainly the key to comprehension. I have noticed within my small tutoring group of 4th graders (comprehension is our goal) that whenever we take the time to do fluency activities (choral reading, work on intonation, etc), they can ALWAYS answer comprehension questions much better after the reading. There is a lot more to fluency that I initially realized. I am interested in trying out the PPPP strategy mentioned op page 265 with my group. I'm intrigued by the idea of implementing a fluency log as well. Reader's theater is one of my all time favorites that students seem to thoroughly enjoy. I appreciate the abundance of fluency strategies discussed in this chapter.
Brandy, You make a really good point that the author want us to see the story as they intend. So yes, it definitely takes good fluency components to really bring a story to life when one reads it. I also agree that punctuation is so important to the meaning of a phrase. It can be difficult to teach children to change the expression of their voice to follow specific punctuataion. But it does make a big difference in the sound and meaning of reading text aloud.
Fluency: the key to successful reading. In general, fluency is related to all other aspects of reading, such as phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehension, etc. When these other aspects don’t function correctly, fluency does not occur, and comprehension is affected. Thus, fluency is a key component to reading instruction.
Chapter 10 focuses on components of fluency: rate, automaticity, phrasing and prosody, expression, and punctuation. It also focuses on the assessment and correction of fluency difficulties. In many cases, fluency correction relates back to other instruction. Rate is affected by difficulty in phonics and phonemic awareness. The same is true with prosody. Most important is to remember that, with practice, all elements of reading improve.
I currently have a tutoring student who has great comprehension skills when she hears a passage read aloud. However, if she were to read the same passage “cold”, she is stuck sounding out every letter. She does not recognize many sight words, word families (onset and rime), or phonograms. Her rate and comprehension are affected. She is not a “fluent” reader. So far I have tried the flash card method, reviewing vocabulary before reading the passage aloud, then having her read portions aloud. I believe the PPPP Strategy (preview-pause-prompt-praise) will work well with her, and the echo reading method.
In response to Holly D. I've also used flash cards to play tic tac toe, increasing the amount of words we use each time, but shuffled into the deck. My students have really improved their vocabulary this way.
This chapter has been the most useful for me directly so far. My tutoring students all tested into fluency for a reading goal. I was surprised at how well their comprehension was since they struggled to read fluently alone. One of my students reads fast, with no expression simply word calling. The other two struggle with rate and decoding. I have found that using echo reading has been one of the most beneficial ways to develop their reading skills. I had to back our guided reading books down a couple of grade levels which has also seemed to help them. I had recorded each of them reading at first and have recorded them as they progress. Occasionally we listen to it to let them see how much better they are sounding. Phrasing and expression have been a main goal of our fluency building which the echo reading has also helped with. It can get rather comical as we read various texts and i over-exaggerate expression and voice tone. They do a good job repeating me and seem to enjoy it. I liked the flash card activity in this chapter. I try to introduce my students to new words on flashcards each session before we read so that when they come across those words they are more comfortable with them.
Chapter ten talked about fluency. I hadn’t ever given fluency much thought because it came so naturally to me but I think now that a lot of students struggle with it so I was eager to read this chapter. I learned that there are four parts to fluency: rate, automaticity, phrasing, and expression. Each of these components is equally important when teaching a child how to become a fluent reader. I like some of the strategies we have talked about in class such as echo reading. I have used it a little bit with my students and can already see the improvement. I can remember when I helped a school in Garden City I had a dual language class that was working on fluency. Their teacher had sentences on sentence cards that the students practiced every day to help them become more fluent in the English phrases. I liked the idea and the students had fun challenging themselves to get through more and more cards each week. Some of my first graders have a problem with punctuation and grammar. When they write I constantly have to ask them what goes at the end of a sentence etc. I think this may be part of their fluency problem because they aren’t seeing the periods and what not when they read so we are going to address that. I liked this chapter because it is so important that students are fluent.
in response to Shylah: I like the idea of letting the students listen to themselves to hear improvement. Do they ever comment on the improvements? I bet they get excited and are happy that they are getting better. How often do you let them listen to themselves?
Chapter 10 deals with fluency and the characteristics of what makes a fluent reader and what does not. In school I have worked with children that we are constantly going over sight words but it is in isolation. When the same words are in the text he cannot pronounce them. I wondered aloud if he would benefit in working with sight word phrases where the word is not just in isolation but within a phrase. To me that would be the next logical step. First in isolation, then a phrase and then within the text. My thought has never been recognized though, he still can read the flashcard, but cannot read it within the text. One of the interventions is readers theaters and I would like to do more with my tutoring group. I want short ones, but I cannot seem to be able to find anything on the internet to use.The other strategy that I like and think would be good to use is having the reader use a tape or the computer to record their reading.
I make flashcards for our guided reading and for the read aloud. If I do that, the students will look and listen for those words. Also, in 4th grade they go over vocabulary before reading and half of their test is over the vocabulary that was introduced in the text.
Chapter 10 – Fluency I was excited that this chapter was about fluency because my objective for tutoring is fluency. I have found it difficult to find activities and assessments for fluency (compared to comprehension and phonics). Because fluency is most noticeable when reading is done aloud, I have had a hard time coming up with ways to assess it. I appreciate the activities in this chapter, greatly! I also found it interesting that fluency is important to comprehension.
I remember those students back in elementary school who were terrified to read aloud. The book states that students who struggle with fluency are self-conscious and are afraid to read aloud. I was not one of those students but I can only imagine that would be a terrifying experience. I think that we owe it to our students to increase their fluency so that they do not struggle with reading out loud throughout their school years and through life. If you think about it, if a student struggles with fluency their entire life, it could affect many aspects of their life such as jobs.
The book gave various components of fluency: rate (wpm), automaticity, phrasing or prosody (recognition of phrases), punctuation, and expression. Like in every chapter, I liked the chart that shows traits of fluent vs. disfluent readers (page 255). I also loved the echo reading activity on page 264. I am excited to incorporate echo reading in my lesson plans!
I love how your mentor teacher incorporated fluency at the end of each lesson! After reading Chapter 10, I realize how vital fluency is. I think that students who struggle with fluency can have such anxiety when asked to read out loud. If the fluency issue is not resolved, their anxiety could carry over to their adult life and work. I am also glad to hear that the echo reading was successful in your mentor teacher's classroom! I am looking forward to incorporating that into some of my future lessons.
Chapter 10 focuses on fluency. This is the goal for my students during tutoring. My students tend to reading right through the words, not paying attentions to punctuation or reading with any expression. This in turn affects their comprehension of the text. I have been peering at this chapter all semester for ideas for activities with fluency. My favorite part of the chapter was the definitions for fluency on page 254. Each definition is different but they all basically say the same thing. My favorite definition is “The ability to read smoothly, easily and readily with freedom from word recognition problems and dealing with words and larger language units with quickness” To me this definition covers all aspects of fluency. Some of the activities I have used from this book are Echo Reading, Choral Reading and Readers’ Theater. It took a while for the students pick up on the echo reading, but once we went through the activity a couple times, they started rolling. My students really enjoyed the Readers’ Theater. It is fun for them to portray someone else. They also really like the choral reading. I think that they are more comfortable to read aloud if everyone is reading aloud. The one activity I would still like to try from this chapter is the Preview-Pause-Prompt-Praise. I think I may try the PPPP strategy this week with my students during guided reading.
My goal for tutoring is also fluency. I agree it is difficult to find activities and create the objectives. I have also found that none of my students like to read aloud by themselves. Although they don't mind reading as a whole group. I believe students start from an early age the round robben reading so by the time they are out of elementary school they have lost all confidence in their ability to read aloud independently.
Chapter 10 covered the topic of Fluency. The goal for my tutoring students is phonics, but as I continue to hear them read aloud, I see that they also need instruction in fluency as well. In class we looked at the definitions of fluency on page 254. All of the definitions given are great and I think really idenitfy what fluency really is. The components of fluency include rate, automaticity, phrasing, expression, and punctuation. I feel that each one of the components plays a very important role in fluency development. If one component is missing a students' fluency may struggle greatly. I really liked the informal assessments that were given for fluency. Things such as checklists, running records, miscue analysis, and rubrics are all great ideas that can be easily implemented into fluency instruction. I liked the Echo Reading activity and the PPPP Strategy that were given in this chapter as well. I think that using the Echo Read in my group would be a great and fun activity for the students. Does anyone have any activities they have used for fluency instruction that their students have really enjoyed?
In response to Melinda: That is great that you have been consulting this chapter throughout your tutoring sessions. I also like the definitions page on 254. They are all great definitions that really show what all fluency encompasses. I think that using Echo reading in my group may be a great tool for my students, so I am going to implement that in the near future. It is good to know that it may take the students a while to understand the meaning of echo reading, but eventually they will pick up on it. I haven't used the PPPP strategy either, but Mrs. Stoppel has said some great things about it. I think it is wonderful that you are going to implement that into your lessons for a variety of instruction strategies for your group!
The discussion in Chapter 10 is “fluency.” Which I felt in the beginning related to my tutoring student with recognizing the words which they do very well but not understand the meaning and put it in a sentence. I thought the table of information on page 255 gave some great insight about fluent vs. disfluent. It was a checklist to see how well my tutoring students are doing. This is the goal that I have been working on with my students and timing them. So far I have seen great improvement! I had no questions about this chapter it gave good points and explained very well. It didn’t’ make me look at the issue differently; I connect the material with my students and that I relate the fluency and felt very connect to this chapter.
In response to Kelsey M. I have research fluency activities it is the goal I'm working on with my students and I found reading scripts. So the students are reading the "Sandlot." This gives them a different approach of reading with expression and improving their skills.
I think that strategy that your mentor teacher is a great strategy. It's important for students to be able to tell what accomplishments they have made by practicing. If they feel they aren't great readers then listening to themselves improve could really boost their self-esteem.
I never realized how important fluency is until we started learning about it in class and from reading about it. I knew fluency was important but never realized how bad students need fluency in order to learn other reading strategies. One thing I won't ever forget about fluency after taking this class is that in order for students to fully comprehend what they are reading they have to be able to read fluently. Which makes sense, because students aren't understanding what they are reading if they have to pause and sound out each word. I remember in Junior High there were a lot of kids in my class that still struggled at reading and hated round robin reading because they missed a lot of words or they had to sound out a lot of words. Those were always the students that hated reading and they would always be the students that struggled to get their A.R. points and wouldn't be able to do the fun things that came with getting your A.R. points. Once we got to high school they still hated reading, and still struggled at it. Now I know why, they weren't fluent readers. They should've been helped a long time ago when we were still in early elementary school. It's important we catch these problems early because it will effect those students the rest of their lives.
The chapter was over fluency. Fluency has 4 important factors; rate, automaticity, phrasing, and expression. All of these are important for a student to have when they read different reading materials. When a student reads, they are not only seeing the writing on the pages they are using these factors in order for the reading to make since and so they understand. If a student cannot read at a steady pace, the student may not comprehend what it is that he or she read. When the child doesn't read with expression, they miss out on the importance of punctuation. If the student cannot phrase, then the story just runs together and it makes no since what-so-ever. It is important for us as teachers to help students understand the importance of fluency and use different strategies to help them improve this skill in the Big 5.
In response to Brandy Lynn: I thought this chapter was very useful. I agree that punctuation is important! I had many people in my class who would run sentences together and it made no since what-so-ever. It was almost impossible for me to keep up with what we were reading.
I found this chapter to be very helpful because it discusses fluency and I am focusing on fluency in my tutoring sessions. I was glad to see the table on page 255 listing characteristics of fluent and disfluent readers. Automaticity is one part of fluency and in it there are four parts. The ones a few of my students struggle with is associating letter combinations with their sounds and chunking syllables within words. I used to not think that punctuation had anything to do with fluency, but through this class and this chapter I see how it affects a child’s fluency. This chapter is also about assessments. I think that checklists are a good form of assessment as well as running records. There is a table on page 263 about research related to fluency. This table was interesting because it showed the correlation between several of the big 5 and fluency. Echo reading is a great tool for ESL students. I have used the reader’s theater with my tutoring kids a few times. They really enjoy it and helps the students to practice reading with expression, as they get into character. I really enjoy this book and the activities that in offers.
in response to Kiley A. I also never realized how fluency affected other parts of reading until this class and particularly this book. I found it interesting how all the big 5 weave into each other so much.
Alisha G. I also felt very connected to this chapter. I was excited to see several of the things I have been doing in tutoring in the chapter and I also found the information on page 255 about fluent and disfluent readers very useful.
Whew! I wish I would have read this chapter before I began my tutoring sessions. My main goal is phonics but I have incorporated fluency into our groups lesson plans. I learned so much from this chapter. Fluency is the ability to read with the intended interpretation of the author. Fluent readers read at a good pace and attend to punctuation in sentences. They raise their voices for question marks, pause for commas, and increase in volume for exclamation marks. Fluent readers recognize words automatically and quickly decode unknown words. Comprehension is always at the fore front of fluency. Reading rate can never substitute for comprehension. This chapter gave me great ideas of what to do to aid students who struggle with fluency. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter is the section on automaticity. This is where my students struggle the most. They struggle with the ability to engage and coordinate a number of complex subskills and strategies with little cognitive effort. The most important portion I read was on page 257. “Reading word-by-word may be a result of poor instruction given to struggling readers…” The paragraph beginning with this sentence absolutely made me look at my own reading instruction and I absolutely do the same thing. I need to prepare my students to think for themselves and read phrases rather than words and wait for encouragement. This can be given at the end of a passage!
In response to Kim D: I too love the checklists and assessment tools that this book gives. I actually shared this book with my mentor teacher and she requested some copies for herself. This is a book that I will reference often in the future. It already looks like a very well read book due to all of my sticky notes and margin writing!
Chapter ten focuses on fluency. Prior to taking our reading and language arts courses I did not realize the importance of fluency when reading. When I look back on it now, I do not understand how I could have taken fluency for granted! Last semester I interned with second graders and one of the girls that I worked with had a very difficult time with fluency. Her struggles with fluency interfered with her ability to comprehend the material she was reading. It was also emotionally stressful for her. This is one reason that I feel round robin reading is not an effective program. She would have been completely turned off, and literally panicked if she had to experience a program like round robin reading.
ReplyDeleteThere are eight principles that the book feels teachers should use to guide fluency instruction. All of the eight principles are extremely important. It is important to expose students to fluent reading. When they can hear readers read with expression and appropriate pace they will benefit. I also think it is important to provide students with repeated readings and easy readings when they are learning to read with fluency. Books that are at a student’s instructional level will be very difficult to read with fluency when students are struggling.
One strategy that my mentor teacher used was to record students reading a book at the beginning of the year. She would then set a goal or a specific date where she would have the student read the same book into the recorder. The students would then go back and listen to their first recording. After listening to the first recording they would listen to the second. The student could then hear the achievements they have made. I think that this gives students a goal to look forward to. They are also able to hear their own success. I also think that reader’s theatre is a great method for improving fluency. When using this method it is important that students are given time to practice their part silently. When students go into a reader’s theatre and they are acting out the script for the first time aloud they may struggle. This can lead to student embarrassment which will make reader’s theatre a threatening activity.
Fluency is important because it affects many different components in the reading process. I think that all of the strategies should be tried in the classroom if a student is struggling with fluency. We must get our students excited about reading if we want them to be successful.
In response to Jaclyn:
ReplyDeleteI really like what your mentor teacher did. I think letting a child hear their own success is a great idea. If they can see that they are improving, they are going to want to try to do even better.
Fluency is the topic of chapter 10. Rate, automaticity, phrasing, and expression are the four components of fluency. Fluency is important because it goes along with all of the other Big 5. Without fluency, students are too focused on the word and not what they text they are reading means. When a child reads with fluency, they not only read the words correctly, they read at a good pace, with expression. The author of a book wants you to really see the story how they do, so you should be expressive when reading.
ReplyDeletePunctuation is something that is also very important when reading. The reader should recognize the punctuation and take the appropriate action. If a reader skips over a period, they are running two completely different sentences together and they will not understand the meaning of what they just read. I also like the activity fluency developmental lesson. I like the flow of this lesson and how it works with all students in the group.
Brandy,
ReplyDeleteI worked with second graders last semester and I experienced the effects of poor fluency on all areas of the big five with many students. The students also lacked the self-confidence to even begin trying to read because they were aware of their struggles. I agree that fluency is such an important factor in students' understanding of the reading material.
Fluency is not just reading at a rapid/good rate. It also consists of expression, phrasing, and automaticity. I personally think that fluency and comprehension can go together very well, if a child is spending all the time trying to read the words correctly they can loose the meaning of the text.
ReplyDeleteI had a mentor teacher for Reading methods that focused on fluency at the end of every lesson. No matter what the students had read that day they then reread it and focused on fluency. She used echo reading quite a bit in her class and I can see the benefits to it.
The other idea towards the end of the chapter was readers theatre, what a great way to incorporate emotion/phrasing into the reading.
In response to Brandy,
ReplyDeleteI agree that punctuation is a key part of fluency. I wonder if it is the part most overlooked by many. Knowing when to take a breath, pause for effect, etc.. is crucial to reading with fluency.
Also, I agree when the students are completely focused on the words they are loosing what the author is trying portray in the story.
I loved how my mentor teacher would have the students echo read it was a great way for her to model how to read and the students caught on quickly.
“Comprehension is the main purpose for all reading, and fluency is important for comprehension.”Fluency has four major components, rate, automaticity, prosody and expression. Both of my tutoring students had great fluency while reading from the assessment text. But, I’ve noticed in my guided reading sections, they aren’t that great. They’re not horrible, but they read right through the punctuation marks and don’t comprehend what they just read . Mrs. Stoppel gave a great example in class about punctuation and how changing the punctuation changes the feel of the sentence. This is something I am going to have my students do in one of their lessons. I also think the PPPP Strategy (page 265) is a great activity and something else I want to include in my tutoring sessions. Our goal is comprehension, but like the book states, you can’t have comprehension without fluency.
ReplyDeleteLast semester in my reading internship class, my mentor teacher used Reader’s Theatre. The students loved this activity and it helped them tremendously. She had a lot of low level readers and the repeated practice of reading the text and listening to other students reading fluently really helped those that were struggling.
In response to Brandy,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that punctuation is really important. I notice both in my tutoring sessions and even in my internship classes the students reading right through the sentences. When they read through the sentence and onto the next sentence, they lose the entire meaning of the passage.
Fluency is important for reading. Comprehension is the main goal for reading and if a reader is not fluent they are spending all of their energy reading the words instead of comprehending the text. There are several methods to improve fluency. Reader's theatre, choral reading, repeated readings, chunking text, and many others listed in the text. Fluency includes reading with expression, reading rate, recognizing chunks in words, and phrasing. There are many activities that students will enjoy listed at the back of the text. I am working with fluency in my tutoring group. There are many activities that I have used from the Florida State site, and also from the text. The students typically enjoy doing the activities and they don't even realize that they are working to improve their fluency.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Christine D. I have also seen students enjoying reader's theater. They enjoy practicing their parts and putting on a show. In my tutoring group I used a poem to read for several sessions. The students would gain speed and expression every time they read it. It was a short poem and this took very little time.
ReplyDeleteJanet,
ReplyDeleteI agree that fluency is extremely important for success in reading. I have been using a lot of different activities from the FCRR website too. My main focus is vocabulary and I have found that the students really enjoy most of the activities and they have learned so much from them.
In response to Christine….
ReplyDeleteI’ll bet watching the Reader’s Theatre was a lot of fun. I would have enjoyed watching that. My mentor teacher last year used read aloud where she read a chapter, then assigned the next chapter to read. She gave the student’s time to read in class (5th grade) and the next morning gave a verbal 5 question quiz to make sure the students finished reading the chapter. (Many of the students were not reading the assignment. This solved that problem really quick.
Chapter 10
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 discusses how fluency is important to reading yet comprehension is important to fluency. If a student does not comprehend what they are reading, all their energy is wasted on decoding the text. I have noticed in my tutoring class of 1st graders that they don’t know how to use punctuation yet. I am trying to explain it to them, but they are still spending too much time trying to get the words right.
In my tutoring sessions, we have tried the Echo reading, but the students butt in if they know the words coming up. We are working on this and they are getting better. I am going to try the PPPP Strategy activity listed on pg. 265 and see how that works in my tutoring session.
I have been doing some echo reading with my own daughter during her reading time at home. She struggles with her reading not because she can’t read but because is so afraid of being wrong or called out, that she would rather act as if she can’t do it. Echo reading has been a huge help with her while reading at home. She is gaining the much needed courage to participate at school during guided reading time, since we started echo reading with her. I absolutely love CARBO recorded book method. I used this method while teaching for headstart in my listening center. My classroom all spoke a second language and English was not a primary language spoke in their home and they had very little English. My listening centers consisted of all my recorded tapes in both English and in Spanish. As the year progress I was amazed with the fluency level in both languages from my students. I just started doing this with my own daughter and she really enjoys this tapes. Something I want to do is have her participate with me in reading so that she can hear herself read too.
ReplyDeleteDeb, my daughter did that until I made her lips! I enlarged funny lips and had her decorate them and then we glued them to a popsicle stick! So while I am reading the passage her lips are in front of her face. When she is reading the passage my lips are in front of my face! I am anxious to hear from you how PPPP strategy works with you!
Chapter 10 is all about fluency which is an important aspect of any competent reader. While comprehension is the main purpose of reading, fluency is an important part of reading for comprehension. I found the reciprocal theory on page 254 to be an important thing to remember when working with students who struggle with either fluency or comprehension.
ReplyDeleteThe chapter provides a number of definitions of fluency and provides many examples of traits of fluent readers. I am using fluency as my goal for tutoring and have worked on several of these traits throughout my sessions. In my work in the classroom and in my tutoring sessions, I have noticed that expression and punctuation seem to be difficult for many students. In my internship class the students break up into workshops to provide assistance with different reading difficulties. One strategy I noticed my teacher use for working with punctuation is to require students to tap their pencil or finger at the end of each sentence. This requires them not only to pay attention to periods, exclamation points, and question marks, but to pause at these punctuation marks as they tap the table. This seems to work very well with most students and they have definitely increased their ability to pause for punctuation. I really enjoyed reading the fluency activities in the chapter and plan to include a fluency development lesson in my future tutoring sessions.
Response to Christine D:
I think the PPPP strategy can definitely be helpful in working with punctuation during your tutoring sessions. Reading fluently will certainly help your overall goal of comprehension. I think Reader’s Theatre is a great activity to help students work on fluency. In my internship class last semester the students really loved this activity and it seemed to help those in need of additional instruction in fluency.
Fluency, the topic of chapter 10, has many different definitions to what it is. The definitions range from speed to pitch. There are four major components that make fluency what it is. These components are rate, automaticity, phrasing/prosody, and expression. You do not what students to read as fast as possible without using the other components because in the long run they will not be comprehending. Even though this chapter was a shorter one, I took many fluency ideas from it. One was on page 266, called "Tape, Check, Chart". It is like the student is assessing themselves, and get to see how and where they are having problems. They can fix any mistakes they are having this way. By doing the activity multiple times, the student can keep track of their growth. Fluency is one of my favorite aspects in reading as a reader. I like using expression and making the story interesting. I do not see too many students using this in the everyday classroom, but my students in tutoring are good with their fluency skills.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Tyler G.:
ReplyDeleteI agree when you say students struggle with punctuation and expression. It is almost like getting through the story as fast as possible. One way a teacher told me is a good technique is by having the students read Dr. Seuss books to work on these aspects of fluency. How do they students do with commas?
In response to Lori Amaro:
ReplyDeleteI think students will love the Tape, check, Chart activity even if they don’t like reading just because they get to record themselves and then listen to it. Expression is what makes reading books fun and is what really gets young children excited about reading. Do you do activities to work on expression with your tutoring students?
Chapter 10 is about Fluency. In the text it provided several different definitions for the term fluency. The definition that I liked the most was, “The ability to read smoothly, easily and readily with freedom from word recognition problems and dealing with words and larger language units with quickness.” To me, that definition best sums up what fluency is all about. In the text it says that comprehension is the main purpose for all reading, and fluency is important for comprehension. This is evident in my tutoring sessions because I have several students who read very quickly, but when I ask them questions they often times stammer for the correct answer. The National Research Council Report states that one of the five necessary elements for effective early reading is fluency in all types of text. The four major components of fluency are: rate, automaticity, phrasing or prosody (they are easily interchangeable), and expression. I really felt like I understood everything this chapter discussed. The after school tutoring program has helped me better understand what reading is all about. If a student does not read fluently, is it possible for them to truly comprehend the text? I feel like a student can read fluently but not necessarily comprehend the text. I didn’t know if they were interchangeable? The book said that listening to students and using the informal assessment instruments are most helpful, and I would have to agree with that statement. Sometimes students freak out when they know they are being assessed. I think that there is a proper time and place for formal assessments, and I think with the younger students you should use less formal assessments. The activities at the end of the chapter are really beneficial, and I have found that most of them work really well. I have purchased several of the recordable books from Hallmark and have given them to some of the children I used to babysit. The parents said they have been a huge hit and have helped them tremendously!
ReplyDeleteIn response to Tyler G:
ReplyDeleteThe Reciprocal Theory is something that educators should definitely keep in mind. It is neat to see the stuff from the text put into action. In the after school program several of my students struggle with punctuation as well. It is like it doesn’t even exist to them, and they only pause when they need to take a breath. I really like the strategy that your teacher uses, and I may have to try it out for tutoring!
Chapter ten was all about fluency. I really liked the quote at the beginning of the chapter that said “comprehension is the main purpose for all reading, and fluency is important for comprehension.” This explains exactly why fluency is so important to readers. The chapter goes on to explain what fluency is and how to help students develop better fluency while reading. There were also examples of different types of fluency issues with students and how to help correct the issues. The chapter also talked about formal and informal assessments that can be used in the classroom to determine where students are with fluency. At the very end of the chapter the includes eight principles to guide reading fluency instruction in the classroom as well as fluency instruction tips for working with English Language Learners.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this chapter and saw some of the examples related well with students in my tutoring group. I liked how the chapter explained what fluency actually is and what the specific parts of fluency are. It was also very helpful when the book gave examples of fluency problems and ideas on how to work with students to improve fluency while reading. I really liked the activities at the end of the chapter. The echo reading, preview-pause-prompt-praise, and fluency development lesson (FDL) activities were some of my favorites.
In response to Shelby…I also have students who struggle with comprehension and fluency. I liked how this chapter explained what fluency is and gave ideas and activities to use to help improve fluency. Participating in the after school tutoring has opened my eyes as well! Reading has always been so easy for me and I love it! It is important for teachers to be able to help their students in all areas of development and I am very glad for this opportunity to help students in a smaller group.
ReplyDeleteI have referred to this chapter already during our tutoring and have found the PPPP strategy on page 265 is helpful. It's difficult for me to find strategies that don't involved "Popcorn Reading." I was so used to doing this strategy in my elementary and high school years that it was hard to think of other strategies. It took my students a few tries to warm-up to the idea of all reading aloud together and they hold back from tapping on the table to read by themselves. Does anyone have any strategies they use for fluency or comprehension that really work during guided reading? I'm deciding whether to continue the PPPP Strategy or not...
ReplyDeleteIn response to Becky H,
ReplyDeleteIf you are interested in the PPPP strategy I have tried it and it works well after the students gain confidence to read aloud with others. I put myself in their shoes and it's almost like reading passages together in Church. It's hard not to be monotone when it's all together but once you read a few paragraphs it tends to sync into one voice. I agree that during the chapter I could compare my tutoring students and gained many ideas for the final sessions we have together.
kk
ReplyDeleteThis chapter talked about fluency and I found this chapter to be so interesting! Since I'm working on fluency with my tutoring students I really liked looking deeper into fluency. The example at the beginning of the chapter reminded me exactly of my students because a couple of them can hardly pronounce words. I also really liked the section that talked about expression and punctuation because that's what we've been working on lately. I've been having my students re-read a passage if the expression isn't exactly correct. I thought the section that talked about formal and informal assessments was interesting and I'm sure i'll be referring back to those for tutoring. When I was looking at the intervention activities one that I really liked was the Oral Recitation Lesson. I'm doing activities with my students that are basically the same as this one and it seems to be really successful. I also liked the flash card idea and I think my students would like it as well. We've done a few activities with flash cards that usually lead into some sort of relay game that has seemed to interest the students. I loved all the ideas and strategies at the back of the chapter and I'll definitely be looking back at this chapter as my tutoring continues.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Larissa,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see that the PPPP strategy has worked for you and I'm sure I'll be trying it in the future. I have a very struggling reader and I think this strategy would work great for her. Thanks for sharing!
I really enjoyed reading chapter 10 because the focus of my tutoring group is on fluency. This chapter pointed out the components of fluency including rate, automaticity, phrasing, expression, and punctuation. I think it is important to teach students that fluency doesn’t necessarily mean reading fast, but reading at a smooth and steady rate. I also think it is important to teach students to pay attention to punctuation because this makes a big difference in comprehension. Chapter 10 also gave examples of traits of fluent versus disfluent readers (p. 255). For example, fluent readers use intonation to communicate the meaning of text, while disfluent readers lack expression. I knew that my students struggled with fluency but after reading the traits of disfluent readers I realized how many important skills they lack. During tutoring sessions we have done activities focusing on rate, we created bookmarks with automaticity tips, and we completed an activity using changes in punctuation to affect the meaning of the text. These next couple weeks I hope to focus on phrasing and expression. Through modeling and echo reading, I want to help my students better understand how phrasing and expression affects fluency and how it can make text more interesting and easier to comprehend.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Holly D…
ReplyDeleteFluency is also the focus of my tutoring group. I have used the flash card idea as well and after students can recognize the word, I have them read high frequency phrases that contain the words. We just did an activity last week where I took high frequency words the students had been working on and put them into phrases. Next, I timed each student for a minute to see how many of the phrases they could read. The second time through I asked the students to try and beat their previous score. Inserting the words into phrases seems to have helped their fluency. I’m glad to hear that the Oral Recitation Lesson has worked for your students. I hope to try it in the future.
Chapter ten is all about fluency. I enjoyed reading this chapter because my goal is to improve fluency in third grade students. This chapter gave me some great information and ideas. Fluency is such a crucial piece in the reading process. I did not realize the importance of fluency until taking education courses here at Fort Hays. I found it interesting to read about the eight principles the author believes teachers should use to guide fluency instruction. One of the principles is exposing students to fluent reading. For many students just hearing what fluent reading sounds like can be very beneficial. For this reason, it is important to expose students to fluent reading. One strategy I have yet to use during tutoring, but would like to start doing is recording my students. All of my students struggled with fluency at the beginning of the semester but boy have they improved! I think using a recorder would be a great way for students to listen to themselves read passages and then determine where they are improving and what they still need to work on. Punctuation also plays an important role during fluency. By ignoring punctuation, a sentence can change dramatically. If readers skip over punctuation marks completely it can change the meaning of sentences which consequently leads to poor comprehension usually.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Jaclyn,
ReplyDeleteI loved what your mentor teacher did. I believe letting the students hear themselves reading is a great learning strategy. As you mentioned it also gives them a goal as they are always trying to improve. In my next few lessons, I would like to bring in my computer and use Audacity or use the recorder on my cell phone to record my students.
Brandy,
Throughout tutoring, I have realized how big of a role punctuation play in fluency. At the beginning of the sessions, my students skipped right past the punctuation marks completely. Therefore, like you pointed out as well, comprehension was a struggle for my students because the meaning was not there.
Larissa,
I have the PPPP strategy in some of my next lesson plans. I'm looking forward to trying it!
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron. Horace Mann
ReplyDeleteThis quote jumped out at me because it’s exactly right. A student who isn’t inspired to learn won’t grow in their knowledge and are like cold iron because cold iron doesn’t change. In order to teach a student you need to inspire the student with a desire to learn because then the student is able to grow just like hot iron is able to be changed into anything that you desire.
I found this chapter really helpful on learning how to teach fluency. The scenario at the beginning of the chapter reminds me of listening to some students read because they read like the students in the scenario. I had no idea how to help those students read fluently and it seemed like the teacher didn’t either because they offered no help to the struggling student.
I really liked how the book gave several different definitions on what fluency is. It helped me better understand the meaning of fluency and why students have trouble with it.
I also spent some time looking through the intervention part of the chapter and I liked a lot of the activities in there. Some of the activities I have heard of (echo reading, preview-pause-prompt-praise, readers’ theatre, etc.) and there were a lot of activities that I have never heard of.
This chapter is a good chapter to keep in mind when you are working with your students on fluency. It can also help you on working with your students on fluency early so that they are not going to have to struggle with it later on in their schooling.
In response to Kacey F:
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with everything that you said. In my tutoring class I am working on fluency with my students and I can see how easily frustrated they are when they have to read. They are improving which is great.
Teachers need to take time to develop fluency because it leads to good comprehension. Students need to be fluent readers because if they aren't then they are not going to be good at ready and they will hate reading.
Chapter 10 is on fluency. Fluency is very important when reading. It talks about round robin reading as not being very effective, as it make the children read even those that have major reading struggles. This chapter presents 8 principles that teachers need to follow when instructing in fluency. Each and every one of the principles is important. There is not one that is more important over the others. If a child struggles with fluency, then they will have a hard time comprehending what they read. As teachers, we need to make sure when a student is learning to read, that we give them the easiest level of reading to make them feel comfortable. Fluency goes with all the other aspects of reading and comprehension.
ReplyDeleteWe need to make sure our students are enjoying the reading and not getting frustrated with it. When a student gets frustrated, they get turned off the reading more and more. We cannot let this happen. There are 4 important components for fluency, rate, automaticity, expression and phrasing. If we can get the students to achieve all these, they will become better readers.
In response to Janna Colson –
ReplyDeleteI really like the little quote you stated in your post. That is so true. The definitions were very helpful to me as well. I guess I never knew there were so many different definitions for the same word.
Fluency should be a large part of every student’s reading skills practice because of its importance towards successful reading. When most individuals think about fluency, they only associate it with the speed of a student’s reading, but this is very wrong. Fluency is composed of four major components, these are rate, automaticity, prosody (phrasing), and expression. If students do not possess enough skills in each of these components to read fluently, they are considered to read with disfluency. When a student had disfluency, he/she may read slowly and not recognize words quickly enough, which will cause a drop in the student’s comprehension of the text. In my tutoring sessions, our main goal is comprehension, but I have worked on tying in skills practice on the fluency components as well. We’ve done vocabulary practice for automaticity, and we’ve worked on reading aloud for expression and prosody practice.
ReplyDeleteOn page 257, the text shares an example of a teacher confirming a student’s correct pronunciation after every word; this is not going to help the student learn to read with phrasing, with being interrupted each time. Although, if a teacher rather encourages the student to simply skip an unknown word and continue to the end of the sentence, the teacher will be helping the student read fluently. The student and teacher can always go back to the unknown word after the sentence is read and try to figure out its meaning.
I know we have talked about the Preview-Pause-Prompt-Praise technique during class, but it was useful getting to read about it in the text as well. In fact, in this next week’s lesson plans. I plan on including this strategy to try it out!
In response to April B., I witnessed a teacher use round robin reading almost every day during an internship last semester, and it was obvious the students were not staying focused while other students were reading. I also noticed the students not enjoying reading aloud. I definitely agree with you when you state that teachers should go a level below the student’s instructional level when teaching the student to read. If the students do not feel comfortable reading at their instructional level, than the teacher is not going to be able to work on building up the student’s fluency skills, but perhaps maybe only succeed at frustrating the student with reading. I liked that you mentioned that we cannot let this frustration happen. It is important to help our students build their skills in the four major components of fluency, so they will become fluent, confident readers.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Janel:
ReplyDeleteHonestly, even with students I work with at the school, I make them have expression when needed during readings. I do this with my tutoring students if they are reading aloud. For all students when they come across any sort of expression, and don't read it how it should be said, I read it how it should sound and require them to before they can move on. I think it is very important!
In response to Christine D...I absolutely love seeing Reader's Theater in action and agree that it is a wonderful fluency builder. I have seen it used with great success in a 2nd grade classroom. I would love to try it with my tutoring group soon. Thanks for sharing! Julie
ReplyDeleteChaper 10 has terrific recommendations on fluency. It is certainly the key to comprehension. I have noticed within my small tutoring group of 4th graders (comprehension is our goal) that whenever we take the time to do fluency activities (choral reading, work on intonation, etc), they can ALWAYS answer comprehension questions much better after the reading. There is a lot more to fluency that I initially realized. I am interested in trying out the PPPP strategy mentioned op page 265 with my group. I'm intrigued by the idea of implementing a fluency log as well. Reader's theater is one of my all time favorites that students seem to thoroughly enjoy. I appreciate the abundance of fluency strategies discussed in this chapter.
ReplyDeleteBrandy,
ReplyDeleteYou make a really good point that the author want us to see the story as they intend. So yes, it definitely takes good fluency components to really bring a story to life when one reads it. I also agree that punctuation is so important to the meaning of a phrase. It can be difficult to teach children to change the expression of their voice to follow specific punctuataion. But it does make a big difference in the sound and meaning of reading text aloud.
Fluency: the key to successful reading. In general, fluency is related to all other aspects of reading, such as phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehension, etc. When these other aspects don’t function correctly, fluency does not occur, and comprehension is affected. Thus, fluency is a key component to reading instruction.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 focuses on components of fluency: rate, automaticity, phrasing and prosody, expression, and punctuation. It also focuses on the assessment and correction of fluency difficulties. In many cases, fluency correction relates back to other instruction. Rate is affected by difficulty in phonics and phonemic awareness. The same is true with prosody. Most important is to remember that, with practice, all elements of reading improve.
I currently have a tutoring student who has great comprehension skills when she hears a passage read aloud. However, if she were to read the same passage “cold”, she is stuck sounding out every letter. She does not recognize many sight words, word families (onset and rime), or phonograms. Her rate and comprehension are affected. She is not a “fluent” reader. So far I have tried the flash card method, reviewing vocabulary before reading the passage aloud, then having her read portions aloud. I believe the PPPP Strategy (preview-pause-prompt-praise) will work well with her, and the echo reading method.
In response to Holly D.
ReplyDeleteI've also used flash cards to play tic tac toe, increasing the amount of words we use each time, but shuffled into the deck. My students have really improved their vocabulary this way.
This chapter has been the most useful for me directly so far. My tutoring students all tested into fluency for a reading goal. I was surprised at how well their comprehension was since they struggled to read fluently alone. One of my students reads fast, with no expression simply word calling. The other two struggle with rate and decoding. I have found that using echo reading has been one of the most beneficial ways to develop their reading skills. I had to back our guided reading books down a couple of grade levels which has also seemed to help them. I had recorded each of them reading at first and have recorded them as they progress. Occasionally we listen to it to let them see how much better they are sounding. Phrasing and expression have been a main goal of our fluency building which the echo reading has also helped with. It can get rather comical as we read various texts and i over-exaggerate expression and voice tone. They do a good job repeating me and seem to enjoy it. I liked the flash card activity in this chapter. I try to introduce my students to new words on flashcards each session before we read so that when they come across those words they are more comfortable with them.
ReplyDeleteChapter ten talked about fluency. I hadn’t ever given fluency much thought because it came so naturally to me but I think now that a lot of students struggle with it so I was eager to read this chapter. I learned that there are four parts to fluency: rate, automaticity, phrasing, and expression. Each of these components is equally important when teaching a child how to become a fluent reader. I like some of the strategies we have talked about in class such as echo reading. I have used it a little bit with my students and can already see the improvement. I can remember when I helped a school in Garden City I had a dual language class that was working on fluency. Their teacher had sentences on sentence cards that the students practiced every day to help them become more fluent in the English phrases. I liked the idea and the students had fun challenging themselves to get through more and more cards each week. Some of my first graders have a problem with punctuation and grammar. When they write I constantly have to ask them what goes at the end of a sentence etc. I think this may be part of their fluency problem because they aren’t seeing the periods and what not when they read so we are going to address that. I liked this chapter because it is so important that students are fluent.
ReplyDeletein response to Shylah:
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of letting the students listen to themselves to hear improvement. Do they ever comment on the improvements? I bet they get excited and are happy that they are getting better. How often do you let them listen to themselves?
Chapter 10 deals with fluency and the characteristics of what makes a fluent reader and what does not. In school I have worked with children that we are constantly going over sight words but it is in isolation. When the same words are in the text he cannot pronounce them. I wondered aloud if he would benefit in working with sight word phrases where the word is not just in isolation but within a phrase. To me that would be the next logical step. First in isolation, then a phrase and then within the text. My thought has never been recognized though, he still can read the flashcard, but cannot read it within the text.
ReplyDeleteOne of the interventions is readers theaters and I would like to do more with my tutoring group. I want short ones, but I cannot seem to be able to find anything on the internet to use.The other strategy that I like and think would be good to use is having the reader use a tape or the computer to record their reading.
In response to Shylah:
ReplyDeleteI make flashcards for our guided reading and for the read aloud. If I do that, the students will look and listen for those words. Also, in 4th grade they go over vocabulary before reading and half of their test is over the vocabulary that was introduced in the text.
Chapter 10 – Fluency
ReplyDeleteI was excited that this chapter was about fluency because my objective for tutoring is fluency. I have found it difficult to find activities and assessments for fluency (compared to comprehension and phonics). Because fluency is most noticeable when reading is done aloud, I have had a hard time coming up with ways to assess it. I appreciate the activities in this chapter, greatly! I also found it interesting that fluency is important to comprehension.
I remember those students back in elementary school who were terrified to read aloud. The book states that students who struggle with fluency are self-conscious and are afraid to read aloud. I was not one of those students but I can only imagine that would be a terrifying experience. I think that we owe it to our students to increase their fluency so that they do not struggle with reading out loud throughout their school years and through life. If you think about it, if a student struggles with fluency their entire life, it could affect many aspects of their life such as jobs.
The book gave various components of fluency: rate (wpm), automaticity, phrasing or prosody (recognition of phrases), punctuation, and expression. Like in every chapter, I liked the chart that shows traits of fluent vs. disfluent readers (page 255). I also loved the echo reading activity on page 264. I am excited to incorporate echo reading in my lesson plans!
In response to Jen:
ReplyDeleteI love how your mentor teacher incorporated fluency at the end of each lesson! After reading Chapter 10, I realize how vital fluency is. I think that students who struggle with fluency can have such anxiety when asked to read out loud. If the fluency issue is not resolved, their anxiety could carry over to their adult life and work. I am also glad to hear that the echo reading was successful in your mentor teacher's classroom! I am looking forward to incorporating that into some of my future lessons.
Melinda S.
ReplyDeleteChapter 10 focuses on fluency. This is the goal for my students during tutoring. My students tend to reading right through the words, not paying attentions to punctuation or reading with any expression. This in turn affects their comprehension of the text. I have been peering at this chapter all semester for ideas for activities with fluency. My favorite part of the chapter was the definitions for fluency on page 254. Each definition is different but they all basically say the same thing. My favorite definition is “The ability to read smoothly, easily and readily with freedom from word recognition problems and dealing with words and larger language units with quickness” To me this definition covers all aspects of fluency. Some of the activities I have used from this book are Echo Reading, Choral Reading and Readers’ Theater. It took a while for the students pick up on the echo reading, but once we went through the activity a couple times, they started rolling. My students really enjoyed the Readers’ Theater. It is fun for them to portray someone else. They also really like the choral reading. I think that they are more comfortable to read aloud if everyone is reading aloud. The one activity I would still like to try from this chapter is the Preview-Pause-Prompt-Praise. I think I may try the PPPP strategy this week with my students during guided reading.
In response to Trish W.
ReplyDeleteMy goal for tutoring is also fluency. I agree it is difficult to find activities and create the objectives. I have also found that none of my students like to read aloud by themselves. Although they don't mind reading as a whole group. I believe students start from an early age the round robben reading so by the time they are out of elementary school they have lost all confidence in their ability to read aloud independently.
Chapter 10 covered the topic of Fluency. The goal for my tutoring students is phonics, but as I continue to hear them read aloud, I see that they also need instruction in fluency as well. In class we looked at the definitions of fluency on page 254. All of the definitions given are great and I think really idenitfy what fluency really is. The components of fluency include rate, automaticity, phrasing, expression, and punctuation. I feel that each one of the components plays a very important role in fluency development. If one component is missing a students' fluency may struggle greatly. I really liked the informal assessments that were given for fluency. Things such as checklists, running records, miscue analysis, and rubrics are all great ideas that can be easily implemented into fluency instruction. I liked the Echo Reading activity and the PPPP Strategy that were given in this chapter as well. I think that using the Echo Read in my group would be a great and fun activity for the students. Does anyone have any activities they have used for fluency instruction that their students have really enjoyed?
ReplyDeleteIn response to Melinda: That is great that you have been consulting this chapter throughout your tutoring sessions. I also like the definitions page on 254. They are all great definitions that really show what all fluency encompasses. I think that using Echo reading in my group may be a great tool for my students, so I am going to implement that in the near future. It is good to know that it may take the students a while to understand the meaning of echo reading, but eventually they will pick up on it. I haven't used the PPPP strategy either, but Mrs. Stoppel has said some great things about it. I think it is wonderful that you are going to implement that into your lessons for a variety of instruction strategies for your group!
ReplyDeleteThe discussion in Chapter 10 is “fluency.” Which I felt in the beginning related to my tutoring student with recognizing the words which they do very well but not understand the meaning and put it in a sentence. I thought the table of information on page 255 gave some great insight about fluent vs. disfluent. It was a checklist to see how well my tutoring students are doing. This is the goal that I have been working on with my students and timing them. So far I have seen great improvement! I had no questions about this chapter it gave good points and explained very well. It didn’t’ make me look at the issue differently; I connect the material with my students and that I relate the fluency and felt very connect to this chapter.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Kelsey M. I have research fluency activities it is the goal I'm working on with my students and I found reading scripts. So the students are reading the "Sandlot." This gives them a different approach of reading with expression and improving their skills.
ReplyDeleteI think that strategy that your mentor teacher is a great strategy. It's important for students to be able to tell what accomplishments they have made by practicing. If they feel they aren't great readers then listening to themselves improve could really boost their self-esteem.
ReplyDeleteI never realized how important fluency is until we started learning about it in class and from reading about it. I knew fluency was important but never realized how bad students need fluency in order to learn other reading strategies. One thing I won't ever forget about fluency after taking this class is that in order for students to fully comprehend what they are reading they have to be able to read fluently. Which makes sense, because students aren't understanding what they are reading if they have to pause and sound out each word.
ReplyDeleteI remember in Junior High there were a lot of kids in my class that still struggled at reading and hated round robin reading because they missed a lot of words or they had to sound out a lot of words. Those were always the students that hated reading and they would always be the students that struggled to get their A.R. points and wouldn't be able to do the fun things that came with getting your A.R. points. Once we got to high school they still hated reading, and still struggled at it. Now I know why, they weren't fluent readers. They should've been helped a long time ago when we were still in early elementary school.
It's important we catch these problems early because it will effect those students the rest of their lives.
The chapter was over fluency. Fluency has 4 important factors; rate, automaticity, phrasing, and expression. All of these are important for a student to have when they read different reading materials. When a student reads, they are not only seeing the writing on the pages they are using these factors in order for the reading to make since and so they understand. If a student cannot read at a steady pace, the student may not comprehend what it is that he or she read. When the child doesn't read with expression, they miss out on the importance of punctuation. If the student cannot phrase, then the story just runs together and it makes no since what-so-ever. It is important for us as teachers to help students understand the importance of fluency and use different strategies to help them improve this skill in the Big 5.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Brandy Lynn:
ReplyDeleteI thought this chapter was very useful. I agree that punctuation is important! I had many people in my class who would run sentences together and it made no since what-so-ever. It was almost impossible for me to keep up with what we were reading.
I found this chapter to be very helpful because it discusses fluency and I am focusing on fluency in my tutoring sessions. I was glad to see the table on page 255 listing characteristics of fluent and disfluent readers. Automaticity is one part of fluency and in it there are four parts. The ones a few of my students struggle with is associating letter combinations with their sounds and chunking syllables within words. I used to not think that punctuation had anything to do with fluency, but through this class and this chapter I see how it affects a child’s fluency. This chapter is also about assessments. I think that checklists are a good form of assessment as well as running records. There is a table on page 263 about research related to fluency. This table was interesting because it showed the correlation between several of the big 5 and fluency. Echo reading is a great tool for ESL students. I have used the reader’s theater with my tutoring kids a few times. They really enjoy it and helps the students to practice reading with expression, as they get into character. I really enjoy this book and the activities that in offers.
ReplyDeletein response to Kiley A.
ReplyDeleteI also never realized how fluency affected other parts of reading until this class and particularly this book. I found it interesting how all the big 5 weave into each other so much.
Alisha G.
ReplyDeleteI also felt very connected to this chapter. I was excited to see several of the things I have been doing in tutoring in the chapter and I also found the information on page 255 about fluent and disfluent readers very useful.
Whew! I wish I would have read this chapter before I began my tutoring sessions. My main goal is phonics but I have incorporated fluency into our groups lesson plans. I learned so much from this chapter. Fluency is the ability to read with the intended interpretation of the author. Fluent readers read at a good pace and attend to punctuation in sentences. They raise their voices for question marks, pause for commas, and increase in volume for exclamation marks. Fluent readers recognize words automatically and quickly decode unknown words. Comprehension is always at the fore front of fluency. Reading rate can never substitute for comprehension. This chapter gave me great ideas of what to do to aid students who struggle with fluency. One of the most interesting parts of this chapter is the section on automaticity. This is where my students struggle the most. They struggle with the ability to engage and coordinate a number of complex subskills and strategies with little cognitive effort. The most important portion I read was on page 257. “Reading word-by-word may be a result of poor instruction given to struggling readers…” The paragraph beginning with this sentence absolutely made me look at my own reading instruction and I absolutely do the same thing. I need to prepare my students to think for themselves and read phrases rather than words and wait for encouragement. This can be given at the end of a passage!
ReplyDeleteIn response to Kim D:
ReplyDeleteI too love the checklists and assessment tools that this book gives. I actually shared this book with my mentor teacher and she requested some copies for herself. This is a book that I will reference often in the future. It already looks like a very well read book due to all of my sticky notes and margin writing!