When Sisyphus was in First Grade or One Minute Reading Homework

Like Sisyphus, this practice is an eternal punishment, the analogy of rolling a boulder up a hill forever is apt to what this teacher is making the child endure and is requiring the parents to inflict this on their child.

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents" (Emilie Buchwald).

With a loving embrace shared reading tells the child …”All is well. We are together, and when we open this book we are entering a new and magical place!” It lets the child know that I, the parent, am on this journey with you to become a reader.

There are many reasons for the use of repetitive readings that may lead to fluency, such as enjoyment (“This my favorite book, lets read it again!”), memorization for a performance (poetry out loud, public speaking or theatre) or to foster discussion and comprehension that connects the child experiences to the text, or to the world around them.

The parent is right to question this teacher’s practice and refuse to participate in this. Perhaps she can send a daily or weekly response to the teacher that details the minutes spent and the books read together, thereby educating the teacher. Fluency is not the important focus at this age level, that will grow hand in hand as the child becomes a skilled reader with a strong desire to just read more and more, over and over again.

Edited version.

The massive lack of professionalism in education is beyond imagination. It is fueled by a toxic culture of self over service and loyalty over competence.

Of course, using assessment items or facsimiles is malpractice. You acknowledge this phenomenon in your well written blog. Assessment illiteracy drives this unethical behavior.

When we were conducting systematic implementation of the DIBELS screening and monitoring assessment system in a large school district in Northern California, we observed that teachers engaged in the malpractice of literally teaching the nonsense syllables used in the Nonsense Word Assessment module that gauges whether students can accurately connect graphemes with phonemes. Nonsense words eliminates the confounding variable of sight words. However, teachers actually polluted this assessment by teaching the Nonsense Words as Sight Words to their students prior to the assessment. So pathetic. We then took administration of the DIBELs assessment out of the teachers’ hands and hired assessment experts to administer and score the assessments.

We have very fundamental issues we need to address in education before it becomes a real profession. Fundamental understanding of assessment, implementation, scoring, interpretations, and interventions is just one of many critical areas we need to address!

So far to go!

Fluency is more than timed accuracy, and it is frustrating when teachers only assess fluency with one-minute passages. There is more to fluency than accuracy.

Excellent post, Tim. I love the idea of kids rehearsing (repeat reading) a poem or other short text and then performing it for Mom or Dad with appropriate and meaningful expression.

Some teachers use the 6 Minute Solution book for the one minute fluency practice. This is not copying from the DIBELs passages. Most teachers do not give homework on Fridays so the passage is practiced for one minute 4 times per week (4 minutes total per week). I don’t seriously think this is destroying a child’s love for reading. Children can always read something else to parents after the one minute read.
Some of the children never do any homework. I personally don’t like to give homework anyway. Children have already worked 7-8 hours, and they are tired. However, if parents aren’t going to read with their child anyway (just being a good parent), then maybe assigning one minute per night might help a little.

Perfect. As a retired special ed teacher, I totally agree. Timed readings always made my students nervous. Not a good way to teach. Take the timer away…great read.

I think I would send home short poems, songs, or stories that have some level of interest or humor. It's about balancing the art and science of teaching... (as per Dr. Shanahan's previous post) Motivation, interest, and enjoyment matter. I do not understand this idea of timing children reading. The faster they read, the better the fluency? The better the score? Now we have something to quantify and color code? I do some timed activities with spelling pattern words to work on automaticity, but I make it fun with race car visuals and sound effects. I make it clear that it is just an exercise.

I’m a mom and an educator and this got me wondering about at home reading routines in general. I have been given the same guidance from my kids’ teachers that I used to hand out to parents— 20 min of daily reading at home. I have always had a bedtime practice of reading to my kids, so I don’t count that time (even though teachers have said it doesn’t matter who does the reading). Rather, I’ve wanted my kids to clock some “miles on the page” to build their reading stamina, word recognition and fluency. However day 1 of our 20 minute routine taught me for my first grader that 20 minutes was way too long for them to have to read aloud to me and it certainly wouldn’t have been fruitful to let my guy sit with a book and “read” silently. I have since modified routine to reduce demand up front and then build from 5-10 minutes of kid reading to me toward now, in grade 3, 15 minutes of silent reading followed by a brief comprehension check and 5 minutes of read aloud. I’m going to be presenting to parents in the coming days and am wondering
1) how 20 min recommendation got to be so ubiquitous across grade and age levels.
2) what research tells us about how at home reading should look

Oh hooray! Thank you for evidence that we shouldn't be doing the timed-reading passages in the Wonders My Turn book!

Thank you for addressing this topic. In the Amplify CKLA curriculum, there are ancillary fluency passages but it is unclear of how to utilize them. This post may help teachers use these resources in a meaningful way.

On another note, would you say 6 Minute Solution is not an effective use of time in the classroom?

Good morning I always look forward to your emails. Talking of practising the new skill of reading for young students what are your recommendations? The NZ school I am working part-time at is not sending decodable texts home for practice or reinforcement due to the cost of them.
Thanking you

Good morning I always look forward to your emails. Talking of practising the new skill of reading for young students what are your recommendations? The NZ school I am working part-time at is not sending decodable texts home for practice or reinforcement due to the cost of them.
Thanking you

As a teacher, it’s important that we extend each other grace when we receive questions like this. Increased fluency will ultimately increase comprehension. The assumption here is that teachers aren’t exposing students to the important elements of reading and explaining that there are times when we read quickly against time, but good readers take their time when reading for understanding. If we sent home 30 minutes of reading parents would be frustrated but research also doesn’t support extensive homework and its contribution to education. It sounds like this teacher is simply asking parents to chip in and help out a little. If we trust them as the expert, the child’s fluency will increase but subsequently their comprehension because they will master sight words in the sentences sent home and can save their energy to decode words versus struggling with sight words and decoding. To play devil’s advocate, if we were just preparing for a test, that too is a lifelong skill we use. We study for CDLs, basic license, teaching Praxis exams, college entrance exams, why not prepare for the fluency exam?! The great thing is that if they do well on it, we can assume they will be more proficient readers in the future. Just my opinion….

This is so timely, Dr. Shanahan.
As a second grade teacher deeply passionate about all things literacy, I just recorded a quick video for my families that I sent this week related to this very practice.
In alignment with our phonics skill of focus, we use a reading passage with a high percentage of decodability with many of the words related to our sound/spelling skill.

I explained that this little piece of paper, marked up and likely wrinkled served a great purpose for students and could potentially be a useful resource as it made its way home to their families.

We use the text to identify words with our sound spelling skill as we initially decode it. Then, its use shifts to fluency practice as we scoop phrases to support our repeated readings of the passage.
Students use this text to echo read with me, read with a partner for a short interval of time, and for the remainder of the week, as a one minute read to practice that same phrasing intonation and expression they’ve been explicitly taught and to mindfully notice how far into the text they read… not to race, but instead, hoping that our familiarity with the sound/spellings and practice aids us with an increased speed in recognition of words. Something to celebrate and provide a sense of self efficacy for their efforts.

I told parents that it was a simple way to evaluate their children’s reading progress as the year goes on. They can easily have them read the passage aloud to determine whether or not their child sounds as if they’re reading fluently. If they are, celebrate and toss that little passage away in the recycling. If their child is still labored in reading through the passage, I advised keeping it as a tool to continue to practice for short periods of time when it was plausible… driving to practice in the car, sitting beside a grown up while they prepare a meal or tomorrow’s school lunch.

All that to say, I held my breath when I saw your topic this week. I think so highly of you and your evidence informed insights. I am grateful to hear that there is some research supporting the practice of repeated readings and while I don’t ask my families to practice for the sake of advancing on any kind of assessment… my hope is to partner with caretakers and empower them in understanding the process of reading development and how they can be an integral part of it from home.

I think how we frame the practice is key in understanding its value.

Thank you for all you share!

Timed reading is an excellent way of killing a child’s love of reading. Beating the clock becomes the sole focus. Meaning is ignored. Joy is extinguished.
Fluency is a total package. It includes accurate decoding, appropriate expression, appropriate pace, volume and prosody. It’s not just about how fast one reads.
Repeated reading of poems, chants, ballads, readers’ theatre, etc, can be made fun and is an effective means of building fluency.
However, practices like the one described in the timed reading query, are questionable. I’m seeing too many schools reduce reading instruction to a series of testable items. Dry and boring, with a low effect size.
Let me be clear- I’m not against skills teaching- or skills testing and tracking. Data lead teaching is necessary. But, when we reduce the teaching of reading to a series of disconnected skills, to be constantly measured, we are in danger of forgetting about ‘engagement’. Motivation is a vital element to keeps kids reading in their own time, beyond classroom lessons.
Positive attitudes toward reading are a key element of developing life long readers. I’m imploring teachers to remember that reading should also be an aesthetic experience for the student.

Hi Tim
I really like your posts and recommend them to teachers here in Australia ????????!

My experiences with reading fluency suggest that the type of practice depends on individual students & their existing reading skills? Many students seem to have never been taught about fluency - while others are already fluent. I have found that parents can use repeated reading if they are shown how to use it & limit the time to a school term - especially if their child is a slow reader…

And some early research by Betty Levy ( back in the distant 1980’s) showed clearly that 83% of the likely improvements happens with 4 repeats - this fits nicely within one week!

Students who are already fluent may not have good reading expression - and that’s a whole different ball game!

Thanks for your blog post - I really agree that it’s important to involve parents and have a specific goal!

I believe that having parents conduct a one-minute reading fluency assessment with their child is a valuable practice. It offers a quick and effective way for parents to become actively involved in assessing an important aspect of their child's literacy development. This brief exercise not only helps parents gauge their child's reading progress but also fosters a connection between home and school learning. Encouraging parents to read with their child is essential as well, and providing them with books and
can enhance this involvement. Parents can better understand their child's reading abilities and contribute more effectively to their growth as confident and fluent readers. Believe it or not, I had more involvement with fluency practice than when asking them to read books nightly. I think they liked to see the growth.

Great post. How easy it can be to lose the forest for the trees. Especially in early childhood (or at any point in the emergent stages of learning to read) we can't lose sight of helping kids integrate why we read (fun! discovery! connection! information!) into reading instruction. This approach sounds like we are teaching kids how to 'perform' reading rather than engaging them in becoming readers.

This is incredibly important when teaching children to read. Let them know that you love to hear their voice and the expression of their tone. Smile often and laugh at funny moments. Encourage them always and help them if they are struggling. Make certain they know how proud you are!