Reading Fluency: is the ability to read quickly, accurately, and with expression, and to read fluently, students must recognize most words automatically and be able to identify unfamiliar words easily.
High Frequency Words: The most common words that readers use again and again are high-frequency words. There have been numerous attempts to identify these words and to calculate their frequency in reading materials. 24 common words that kindergarteners learn to read are: a, at, he, it, no, the, am, can, I, like, see, to, an, do, in, me, she, up, and, go, is, my, so, and we.
Word Walls: Teachers create word walls with high-frequency words. They prepare walls at the beginning of the school year and then add to them as they introduce new words.
Word-Identification Strategies: Students use four word-identification strategies to decode unfamiliar words: phonic analysis, decoding by analogy, syllabic analysis, and morphemic analysis. Beginning readers depend on phonics to sound out unfamiliar words, but students gradually learn to decode words by analogy and to use syllabic and morphemic analysis effectively.
Interactive Writing: Students and the teacher create a text and write a message. The text is composed by the group, and the teacher assists as students write the text on chart paper. Interactive writing is a useful procedure for examining young children’s handwriting skills and demonstrating how to form letters legibly.
Guided Reading: is an instructional approach that involves a teacher working with a small group of readers. During the lesson, the teacher provides a text that students can read with support, coaching the learners as they use problem-solving strategies to read the text.
Language Experience Approach: The Language Experience Approach (LEA) is based on children’s language and experiences. In this approach, teachers do shared writing: Children dictate words and sentences about their experiences, and the teacher writes down what the children say; the text they develop becomes the reading material. Using this approach, children create individual booklets.
Choral Reading: is a literacy technique that helps students build their fluency, self-confidence, and motivation in reading. During choral reading a student, or a group of students reads a passage together, with or without a teacher.
Assessing Reading Fluency: Teachers informally monitor students’ reading fluency by listening to them read aloud during guided reading lessons, reading workshop, or other reading activities.
- Automaticity- teachers check students’ knowledge of high-frequency words and their ability to use word-identification strategies to decode other words in grade level texts.
- Speed- teachers time students as they read an instructional-level passage aloud and determine how many words they read correctly per minute.
- Prosody- Teachers choose excerpts for students to read from familiar and unfamiliar instructional-level texts. As they listen, teachers judge whether students read with appropriate expression.
Rubrics: are used to evaluate students and their progress. Rubrics usually contain evaluative criteria. Rubrics are used to assess students’ performances, written products, and multimedia projects.
Activities to increase reading practice and independent reading:
Running Records: are authentic assessment tools because students demonstrate how they read using their regular reading materials as teachers make a detailed account of their ability to read a book. Teachers take running records of students’ oral reading to assess their word identification and reading fluency.
Writer’s Voice: Writers Voice: Writers develop distinctive voices that reflect their individuality. Voice is similar to prosody, is the tone or emotional feeling of a piece of writing.
Dysfluent readers and writers:
Obstacles to Fluency: Students who struggle with fluency may have a single problem, such as slow reading speed or delayed spelling development, or they may face numerous obstacles in both reading and writing. Teachers need to intervene and help older students become more fluent, so they can comprehend what they’re reading, and more fluent writers, so they can focus on creating meaning as they write. Providing targeted instruction is often necessary to help students overcome these obstacles.
Classroom Application: All of these terms in Chapter 6 will be useful in my future as an educator. It is important that we as educators help students read and write. Effective teachers ensure that their students are fluent readers and writers by fourth grade and they work with older dysfluent students to overcome obstacles to fluency using the guidelines presented within this chapter! In this chapter I learned that teachers develop these three components of reading fluency: automaticity, speed, and prosody. Teachers also develop these three components of writing fluency: automaticity, speed, and voice. Reading and writing fluency is very important in schools today, and as a future educator, it is my job to address older struggling students’ obstacles to fluency using specific strategies!
Brianne Brueggen Developing Literacy Blog 