Clearing Up a Couple Important Misunderstandings about Fluency

Teachers who model fluency will find their students reading not only accurately but "with expression." Teach kids to "read it like you talk" will often open the door to fluency. Actually, I have modeled that for adults who don't read like they talk. There is a stilted "teacher read" that isn't the best model for children. If adults would practice fluent reading and then model it, children will get it quickly. One child I knew was reading with NO expression so there was no clue about his comprehension. Once he understood what was expected of him he said, "Oh, I can do that!" and now he reads like an actor. Actually, one of the best ways to practice fluency is to read plays. We don't read plays enough with K-5 kids. And don't forget writing fluency! Start with expressive writing and encourage them to "write like you talk." "Talk to your paper." In a tutorly project with 2nd graders we had them do free writes for 5 minutes and fluency got better and better. Again, model free writes and talk as you write to demystify writing.

Karen

Generally the books/tests that you want kids to work with are the books that you want them to read...in the classroom this means the books from the core reading program, social studies, science, etc.

However with kids who are early in the reading process (Reading like 1, 2, 3 grade levels) word repetition is important. Thus, you want vocabulary repetition from book to book since at that point they are learning words and how to apply phonics, etc.

Thanks

Tim

Dr. Shanahan, I enjoyed your article "Clearing Up a Couple Important Misunderstandings about Fluency," and it made me wonder what your thoughts are on how to fit Tier 2 and 3 intervention into the day for the students. I am a reading intervention teacher and the discussion with core teachers is always about what subject or portion of a subject should be missed when they come to me for intervention. Some teachers have chosen to keep students for various activities, such as the whole class practicing for a play, learning recorders, or a science experiment. I want to keep my job of course, but sometimes I wonder if they should be served in the classroom instead. We have discussed push-in models for intervention, and for special ed as well, and I do not see how these would work either because intervention and special ed teachers would not have enough time in the week to see all the kids who need service when they are spread across several classrooms. So that is probably a whole other question, but what model do you think works better-push-in or pull-out for intervention and special education in the elementary setting?
Thank you, Tasha R.

Tasha--

Tier 2 instruction needs to be organized in a way that supplements rather than replaces classroom reading instruction. That definitely means that kids will miss something, so other efforts are needed to supplement that (if a youngster is going to miss his daily science class because he needs help reading, then what efforts are going to be made for that youngster to gain that science knowledge (parent involvement, homework, after school opportunities, online opportunities, use of science text during reading and reading intervention).

If a student is struggling to the point of needing a Tier 3 intervention (which would mean being substantially below grade level and/or particularly non-responsive to teaching), then it needs to be an alternative to the reading instruction the child was receiving in class.

thanks.

Karen F- Rasinski's newest rubric can be found in his Megabook of Fluency. Earlier (free) versions can be found on his website.

I have enjoyed your posts on using complex text with all students. If a part of my reading instruction is fluency related, should I provide my students with the same complex text or reduce the cognitive load so that fluency—automaticity and prosody—can be practiced?

Thank you for a clear and consice understanding of the importance of fluency to score a child "independent" at a reading level and or grade level. Fluency is a very contentious subject at the school I work at. When I was hired for the 2018-2019 school year as a Title 1 Reading Teacher, I discovered that the primary teachers used a "Whole Language" approach utilizing Lucy Calkins to benchmark their students for independent reading levels. I noticed that Lucy explains that fluency should be taught around level D or E, but it wasn't a part of the score until level J. My background and experience is F&P Classroom, BAS, LLI, Literacy Collaborative, Daily 5, and Wilson Languag Fundations PK-3, and the Science of Reading. When I realised that teachers were not listening to their students read, just having them read silently and benchmarking them 3 times a year, I was shocked. No guided reading, conferencing, etc.. My second year as a part of the Curriculum team, I was asked to be the Instructional Reading Coach PK-2, after it was decided that we would change our Reading Block to a workshop model. Fluency and explicit teaching of foundational skills, comprehension, and language been extremely contentious. How can I show my principal and Reading Specialist the importance of fluency and it's direct effect on independentd reading levels?

Thoughts on Read Naturally for kids with dyslexia or decoding struggles

Hello,

Your clarification regarding whether we think students are fluent or not really had me thinking. I teach middle school, and while I know what fluent reading sounds like, I'm now wondering about my ability to differentiate between the levels of fluency. For example, what does Grade 7 fluency versus Grade 6 or 8 sound like. Thanks, I'll be examining my understanding of fluency more carefully.

Kristine-

The words correct per minute norms can be useful for helping you to make such judgments (along with making the text sound like text). Those norms are included in the resources section of this website.

tim

I am currently learning how to read Russian, and I can firmly attest to the analogy made that compares a lack of reading fluency to trying to read using the Cyrillic, or my case Slavic alphabet! It is brutal and painfully slow, and then so much is lost in the translation that you just can't get to the good stuff of understanding.

Thank you for showing different approaches to focus on different needs. Learning more is always rewarding.