Reading - Fluency
Gary Obermeyer, Mon November 14, 2005, 11:05 AM
The reading for Session Five is "Be a good detective: Solve the case for oral reading fluency." As you read the article note highlights and main points.
Post your summary in this thread. Include at least one concrete example of how what you learned from the article has or will affect your teaching and the anticipated benefit for student learning.
We (Sarah, Terra, and Heather) felt this article had a lot of good information in it. Some of the key points were that fluent readers are more apt to enjoy reading and have higher comprehension ability. Another thing we found interesting was that fluency does not depend solely on speed. It also has to do with smoothness, comprehension, and prosody. We were glad the article listed many methods to achieve reading fluency. Some of which we are already practicing in our teaching and others we have yet to try.
This article states that it is important to realize that before a teacher can improve his/her students' oral reading they must first understand what oral reading is and what they are looking for to improve upon. Oral reading fluency is defined by this article as being the ability to project natural pitch and stress of spoken words on a text at a natural rate. Having oral reading fluency is critical for reading performance. It was interesting to find out that fluency does not depend solely on reading rate. Fluent reading involves accuracy and also meaningful expression. I was very glad to see that the methods used to capture fluency for today's students are currently all being used in my classroom; modeling, repeated reading, paired oral reading, oral recititation, and choral reading.
I have a student that can read very fast but when asked comprehension questions, it is apparent that he does not understand what he has read. Fluency takes into consideration so many different aspects of reading. The article listed many helpful suggestions to achieve fluency. It is important to model good reading to the students that are struggling. We will read a story more than once.
I really enjoyed reading this article. I like how the article brought up the point that many times struggling readers only have other struggling readers as models of fluency when broken down into groups. I found when I am teaching the Harcourt Intervention Guide, most likely what they want you to focus on is Guided Comprehension or Phonics. I agreed that rarely in basal sets do you see the focus on fluency. I am one of those teachers that gets wrapped up in vocabulary development and word recognition. I many times skip over focusing on the elements of expression. This reminded me that even stuggling readers need to focus on the "fun" element of reading. I use most of the strategies that they listed in the classroom. I was glad to get a refresher on Shared Reading. In this article the information was not really new, but nice to have a piece that nicely summarized up fluency.
I really enjoyed this article, because it discussed multiple ways of teaching fluency in the classroom. I am using choral and echoe reading during reading circles and after lunch I read a little out of a novel using lots of expression. The students really love hearing expression and they seem to be using it more and more while they read. One thing that I would like to try is partner reading and repeated reading. Sometimes I get caught up on compare/contrast, cause/effect, vocabulary, etc and forget expression while reading. I will have to work on not skipping the important stuff.
The main thing that stuck with me from reading this article was that fluency doesn't mean just a fast reading rate. I knew this but sometimes I overlook this fact. I too have readers that read very fast but their comprehension and prosody is not good. As a teacher I need to give my students more time to practice their prosody. I make sure I model this but, like Rebecca, I sometimes get too caught up in other comprehension and decoding skills and overlook prosody.
I too knew about "expression", although prosody is a new term for me. This article is a great reminder of how important it is to include prosody in instruction, there is a lot of focus on rate and accuracy. i really enjoyed the methods they included, I knew about some, but this is my first year teaching and this article gave me a clearer picture of what i can start doing with my guided reading groups and how it should look. i will be definitley working with the general teachers to come up with a routine that will help our groups. I am really looking forward to trying the modeling before i let them read, and also the articles method of paired oral reading. Our goal in the groups is to have them read there text everyday and this article gave some me some great ways to incorporate prosody with the curriculum already used.
This was a very interesting article for me. I have always thought Fluency was the speed a student read but after reading this information it has made it clear that comprehension, WPM, rate, expression, prosody etc, are all included too. There was some useful information that will help with my teaching.
I really enjoyed this article. I too agree that you must understand what fluency is in order to teach, assess and guide your instruction in this area. When I was younger, and in school, I believed that fluency was reading fast, and reading rate is on a piece of the puzzle. Recently I have started focusing more on having my students read at a more normal rate (not too fast, and not too slow or choppy) and focusing on expression. When I read aloud, I try to over exaggerate my expression to make it very obvious for my first grade students. Fluency is composed of so many different key pieces, and they are all so essential in the child's ability to comprehend what is being read. I love the knew ideas/strategies that were given to help with fluency, and I plan on using more paired reading and repeated readings to help my students become more fluent readers.
I liked this article. I loved the line... "First it appearss that "young children need to hear themselves read" I have never thought of this as very important before, however, I see it as a wonderful tool to the success of reading fluency.
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There are many components to fluency. "For successful readers, it is the ability to project the natural pitch, stress, and juncture of the spoken word on written text, automaticity and at a natural rate". I have always described fluency to students as reading the way you would talk naturally. Isn't this what it pretty much is without the jargon? Reasons were given why oral reading fluency is important and methods to develop fluency. I use modeling and repeated readings a lot with my students. I would like to try ORL since it uses modeling, repeated readings, rehearsing, performing, and a comprehension strategy. It seems like a good process to develop fluency naturally, but explicitly.
I learned a lot from this article. I knew that reading a story three times was important for understanding but had not realized the many different ways you can have your students do this. I will incorporate the fluent reading prior to the paired reading that I am already having the students doing so that they become more fluent oral readers.
As we read through the article, we determined that there are numerous target goals for reading fluency. We as teachers need to me aware and understand the fluency, like music, has rhythm, phrasing, and requires text interpretation. We need to understand fluency from 2 viewpoints: instructional level and grade level benchmarks. Also, reading with good phrasing and expression helps readers construct meaning from printed words. Comprehension is an integral part of fluency. We need to remember that effective fluency instruction should include modeling fluent reading, having students practice reading passages, and supporting students while they read by guiding them. We do a great deal of this guided reading at the K level and we focus on having students repeat, repeat, and repeat passages until they are sick of hearing it. Just kidding about that part. But we do having them practice over and over again for fluency.
I felt this article was very good. Listening to stories is key for children. They need to hear their teachers read with fluency. If children don't have fluency, they won't have the comprehension. I know because I was one of those students myself. I didn't read with fluency. I sounded like I was coughing up some fur balls as I read as a child. I was a terrible reader - no fluency, no comprehension. I like the buddy reading. I like the friendliness of teaching reading today. The students aren't threatened or made to feel stupid. Great article. Great ideas. I love to teach reading. I love all the help I can get from trainings and classes.
I was somewhat relieved to read the part in this article about future teachers not being taught how to teach fluency. I am a first-year teacher this year, and I can remember feeling a little puzzled at the beginning of the year when I saw the huge emphasis on fluency in our Houghton Mifflin program. I kept wondering how I could forget what it was or how to teach it. After reading this article, I realized that my teacher education program pretty much ignored fluency altogether, which apparently is a common practice. Thanks to our reading program and this academy, I have a much better understanding of the importance of fluency and how to teach it effectively. I feel Houghton Mifflin does a nice job of incorporating all of the fluency teaching methods mentioned in this article: modeling, repeated readings, shared reading, paired oral readings, and ORLs.
We (Kurt, Sookie, Maria, and Liz) learned a lot from this article. We did not know what the word prosody meant and we were relieved that this article helped to educate us. Our reading program emphasizes fluency so we do use it during teaching. However, after reading this article, I realized that I (Liz) had only been doing apart of fluency. I wasn't putting much an emphasis on prosody as I should. I (Liz) use a reading station, where the students buddy read the week's story from reading textbook. However, during the readign station, the students could be practicing paired oral readings that the article mentioned. We found the article to be very informative and helped us to better understand all of the parts of fluency.
This article clearly defines the meaning of prosody for our group. As I read the article, I reflected on my past reading instruction practice. The occasion when I taught expressive reading was when the kids practiced for Readers Theater performance. Mostly, I modeled expressive reading, but did not explicitly teach the kids how. I plan to use ORL more with my ELL students. I also to use Paired Oral Readings as outlined in the article, incorporating the questioning aspect.
I really enjoyed the article "Be a good detective: Solve the case of oral reading fluency". It talked about what oral reading fluency was, some misconceptions, and some strategies for teaching it. I was glad that it defined prosody because that was something I was not so clear on. I also appreciated some of the ideas it offered for teachign fluency like the paired oral readings and students offering each other feedback, as well as the Oral Recitation Lessson. I think that would really be neat to incorporate into a lesson.
This article was interesting and informative because it described fluency very clearly. I now feel very comfortable explaining fluency in detail to my students so they understand it completely. I liked all of the methods they gave within the article not only because it helps give me ideas, but it also makes me aware of how thorough Houghton Mifflin is, especially in the area of fluency. As I wrote in my homework assignment, I thought the paired oral reading was most useful to me and my class. I plan on using it quite a bit because the students are able to not only practice fluency but utilize their knowledge of other strategies like prediction.
I felt that an important point was made about the importance of fluency being an almost necessity for comprehension and enjoyment of reading. I think that the "enjoyment" part of reading can get set on the back burner for many kids, especially if they are struggling readers. I saw this impact many of the students that I had while I was a resource teacher. Now that I am an ECSE teacher my responsibilty to model fluency and repeat readings is very important. This is the time when children are learning about "what reading is", where fluency is such a critical aspect of reading, I need to model this skill as often as I can. I want to try to do more things to show my children how much I enjoy reading, including sharing my favorite stories with them, or discussing our favorite parts of the story after I have read.
As I read the article, I tried to think of how I could use these strategies in Kindergarten and how the Scott Foresman program incorporates them in the lessons. Modeling fluent reading is included in my lessons every day. This is extremely important for this age group. When I read the big books aloud, students clearly see an example of what fluent reading should sound like. They have also started to "predict" events of the text on their own after I have been modeling this for them. I have also tried buddy reading, even though the class is in the emergent and beginning stages. They memorize pattern books and recite them to each other. I plan to utilize this strategy more as they progress. The Oral Recitation Lesson will also prove to be a useful strategy. With only 2 1/2 hours in our kindergarten day, It has been difficult to fit this in. Performing the nursery rhymes in the program will prove to be not only fun for the kids, but will help them practice and see what fluent reading sounds like.
I really liked the part in the article that talked about the three clues to fluency. The first two are obvious, pace and smoothness (rate etc) but the phrasing in the test the natural phrasing is a difficult one to teach I think it's best of course modled and that oral reading is so important. I actually see this in music, too. If they get an unfamiliar song and I don't play it for them to hear they have a hard time playing it or singing it if they don't know how it's supposed to sound! great article.
To help students become fluent oral readers requires interesting modeling,enriching realia to emphasize storyline and a variety of rereads from choral reading by rows, gender groups or pairing reads. I like learning the word "Prosody" and know that an audience is more apt to listen when expressiona and phrasing is heard or taught. Using chart paper and choral read prvious stories as rereads with my 1st graders is quick lessons in fluency with emphasize on expression can be echoed by everyone.
I had the priviledge of spending two days with Dr. Timothy Rasinski last year in Texas. I invoted Dr. Rasinski to facilitate a two day session for the Literacy Specialist in the school district I was working in. We spent two days engrossed in fluency. Dr. Rasinski spent most of his time with us singing, and reading silly poems outloud. Every morning he would lead the group in a choral reading of songs from our childhood. He went on to share that singing is a great way to promote fluency, in fact it involves all the three areas (clues) addressed in the article, pace, smoothness, and phrasing. Singing seems to be a lost art in schools and when Dr. Rasinski openly encourage our classroom teachers to bring singing back into the classrooms, I was delighted. I just thought I would share that with all of you, it was a treat to spend two days with Dr. Rasinski, a time as an educator that I will always remember.
Adding fluency intstruction has been a new challenge for me as a first year teacher. I knew it was important, but now after doing some testing, have found that many students, even though they can read quickly and accurately, cannot comprehend what they read. It is also amazing to me to see how important prosody is in fluency instruction. I try to model and spend time with my students showing them how reading should sound. That they have to pause at commas, periods, etc. That they show emotion and feeling in dialogue and with punctuation like exclamation points and question marks.
The article describes three important areas of fluency - reading rate automatic word recognition, and phrasing. In essence, the rate aspect of fluency can be described as "pace and automatic word recognition as" smoothnes" (Zutell and Rasinski, 1991).
The third element is phrasing. Dowhower( 1991) explained that the "element of prosody commonly referred as reading with expression,is "the ability to read in expressive rhythmic and melodic patterns"(p . 166). This translates into having the ability to read orally using the appropriate pitch, intonations, phrasing, etc. There are at least five avenues that teachers can use to help students become fluent readers. Teachers can ensure that the following take place across the curriculum on a daily basis:
Modeling; Repeated Readings; Paired Oral Readings; Oral Recitation Lesson; Choral Reading
This article states that fluency is necessary for good comprehension and enjoyable reading. It focuses on three key aspects of fluency including: reading rate, automatic word recognition and phrasing. The article also provides some great information about methods for developing fluency. These methods include modeling, repeated readings, shared readings, paired readings, the oral recitation lesson, and choral reading. I have found these methods to be extremely helpful in developing fluency. I have several students in my class who have the decoding skills they need but are not yet reading fluently. I have focused on modeling fluent reading, repeated readings, and paired readings with these students. This article gave me a few more ideas on ways to work with my students on fluency including "The ORal Recitation Lesson".
This article reinforced what I was already familiar with in terms of the importance of fluency and reading aloud. The Oral Rectiation Lesson caught my eye because of the direct format of teaching fluency. There are so many resources available for Readers Theatre materials that fit perfectly with this model and if there aren't you can just write your own from story or nonfiction materials you have. I also found the modeling piece to be very important. I think even when the teacher reads aloud it is important to tell the children that we, as good readers, read fluently and that is something we want for them and go on to explain the importance of fluency. When we do the DIBELS assessments at our school many of the students are very aware of their reading rates and have been practicing reading fluently. It is motivating to many. The last point I wanted to comment on was about the choice of material to practice with - it should be either instructional or independent level material. Great article!
This article reinforced what I already know and use in my reading groups. I agree that fluency is something that is difficult to teach and often not emphasized especially with low readers when the focus is teaching them letters, sounds, or words in isolation (I am guilty of this). Allington's six hypotheses for why some students prove to be more fluent than others has proven to be truth because my parents didn't read to me at home to serve as that model, and I struggle to read and comprehend at the pace of my peers to this day. I have used all of the methods for capturing fluency except ORL. I would really like to try this to change up rereadings and make it more exciting. Even though I am not an artist by any means, I would also really like to try adding an illustration to our weekly poem from our McGraw Reading book especially if it develops meaning.
In third grade we test Oral Reading Fluency using the DIBELS testing. We work a lot on this in my classroom during guided reading groups, whole group instruction, and the fluency center. It states in this article to use modeling, repeated readings, paired oral readings, and ORL's. I have used all of these methods except for ORL's. The performance piece of the ORL's is what I have not done except for a reader's theatre we have just finished. This article served as a great reminder that fluency is hard to accomplish and comes with a great deal of modeling. I want to accomplish stressing this to parents and modeling fluency to them at our next parent teacher conferences.
With my younger students, a lot of time is spent with modeling fluency. To help students practice thier own fluency we use a lot of repeated readings, repetitive texts, and retelling activities. I think it is a good idea to include parents as examples of reading fluency.
This article was a good review of different strategies to use in order to increase my student's reading fluency. The article helped remind me of all of the components that make up fluency. Sometimes, in this world where so much emphasis is placed on speed, that there are other aspects that make up a fluent reader. Such as, reading rate, automatic word recognition, and phrasing. We often are so focused on the speed and accuracy aspects of our student's reading that we often forget the importance of prosody ("the ability to read a text orally using appropriate pitch, stress, and juncture; to project the natural intonation and phrasing of the spoken word upon the written text.").
The article also reviewed various methods that can be used to improve student's reading fluency. The methods mentioned in the article were: modeling, repeated reading, paired oral reading, Oral Recitation Lesson, and choral reading. With the exception of the Oral Recitation Lesson I use all of these methods every week with my students. We're lucky because these methods are built into our reading program. I was glad to read an article that explains how repeated helps to build fluency. This was the only method that I had some questions about but now that I read the portion of the article devoted to this method I feel much more confident implementing this method in my own classroom.
The best way for students to become more fluent is by reading (practice, practice, practice) and to hear a good reader model reading fluency. The first thing we do when we meet with our students is to have them re read what they read yesterday, I take turns listening to them read to see if their fluency is getting any better. I also do running records with them to document progress.
This article really reinforced what I already do a lot of in my own classroom to improve the student's reading fluency. The part that really helped me understand more about reading fluency was when it explained how fluent readers have the modeling at home, are often encouraged more, and have more opportunities to read and practice their fluency. Poor readers are encouraged to focus on word recognition and other isolated skills. This makes me think of my own experiences and how this is true with my low readers. Modeling fluency sounds simple but is often forgotten or not done as often as it could be in many classrooms. The article said that repeated readings and shared reading will help improve reading fluency. In my classroom I do these on a daily basis. I have seen growth in my lower readers in the fact that they are not focused on the decoding skills (after several repeated readings) and can focus on the fluency and expression. I then put the repeated readings in personal reader which is often read several times independently. This was encouraging to hear that some of the things I already am doing are contributing to my students improvement with reading fluency.
We (Kurt, Sookie, Maria, and Liz) learned a lot from this article. We did not know what the word prosody meant and we were relieved that this article helped to educate us. Our reading program emphasizes fluency so we do use it during teaching. However, after reading this article, I realized that I (Liz) had only been doing apart of fluency. I wasn't putting much an emphasis on prosody as I should. I (Liz) use a reading station, where the students buddy read the week's story from reading textbook. However, during the readign station, the students could be practicing paired oral readings that the article mentioned. We found the article to be very informative and helped us to better understand all of the parts of fluency.
I thought this article was very interseting. I have had a hard time trying to get some of my students to read at a more fluent level. I am working on paired reading at all levels and individual coaching especially with expression. I know that I will look back on this article to change some of the ways that I teach my guided reading groups as well as using stratagies during individual reading.
The best way for students to acheive fluency is by rereading "practice makes perfect". Hearing a good reader model reading fluency is helpful. Every morning my students walk in the door, sit down and reread their phonis readers. I ask them why I have them reread and they tell me for fluewncy. I ask them what does that mean? and they tell me it is so they can read with out making mistakes. I ofc ourse then model fluency and remind them that they have to reread in order to achive it. They love to come and read to me for assessments on frisay because by that time, thay have acheived it with ine of the weekly stories.