Jun 9- Fluency

        The articles from this week are in relation to fluency and testing the fluency of students as readers. Classrooms that work identify fluency as the ability to read most words in context quickly and accurately and with appropriate expression. A fluent reader is someone who can read smoothly without hesitation and with comprehension. Fluency is such an important component of reading, and if students are to comprehend what they read they must accurately identify the majority of the words. If a student is reading a text, and misreads a crucial word it can derail their understanding and comprehension of the text. The rate of fluency is extremely important, and can be understood through two parts: automaticity and speed. The automaticity is the students ability to get the words of a page quickly and effortlessly, without having to really think about it. While the rate is important, as well as speed, the other main component is prosody. This is basically the phrasing and expression the reader has when reading a text. This includes the quality of tone, inflection, and rhythm.
          There are different ways and approaches to asses the fluency of students as readers. The article by Theresa Deeney discusses the approach of one minute measures to help identify students who cannot read accurately or quickly. The approach is a one minute reading by the student of a short text, in which the amount of “mess-ups” are calculated into the fluency of the reader. While this can be a good approach, it can lead to problems because of a heavy reliance on them. The problem with one minute measures simply are not long enough, and do not include a long enough amount of text to gain accuracy and rate for all students. In my opinion, this measure should be used however, it should be used with a combination of other methods, to really understand the “what” as well as the “why” in terms of reader’s fluency. The book suggests some other options to gage the progress of fluency. The three most influential are easy reading, echo reading, and choral reading. Easy reading is so important because it builds readers confidence. There are several ways to give students experience, including a buddy reading system, independent reading, and group reading. For echo reading, it is important to model fluent reading to your students, while being as expressive as possible. Choral reading is also encouraged, where students become involved in the story by using play styled text, where the students are given the opportunity to read all the parts. In terms of helping to promote understanding all the words within a text, a word wall is an extremely good idea. Where you introduce the students to different words, where an extreme emphasis is placed on the word, before hanging it on the wall, and introducing another. This allows students to access them easily, and recognize words they would otherwise not understand. I think a combination of all these things is the best approach to promoting and developing students fluency as reading. Because students all develop their fluency at different times, and at different levels, it is important to give all your students time to develop at their pace, with confidence being the most important part.