I agree with Lori's statement below. And I would go further to say that fluency should not be something one practices, but rather something one becomes, and that becoming happens with more reading. Real reading. Not reading while being timed for one minute. Not reading excerpts of stories that have no beginning and no end. Not reading test questions. But real reading of something that is interesting to the reader.
I've been teaching a pretty long time. It seems curious to me that in the early 90s, nobody "practiced fluency" and nobody tested it either, yet we managed to have children learn to read, talk about what they had read, write book reports and essays about books they had read, etc. etc. Do some children need more intervention? Well, yes. That's always the case. But I would argue that more reading for those children would increase their fluency as well. I am beginning to feel that the "old school" has become the "revolutionary school" of thought. My two cents. Renee On May 22, 2007, at 5:38 AM, ljackson wrote: > I think if children do lots and lots of reading in meaningful and > inspiring > situations, that for most children, fluency will not be a serious > issue. > You become fluent in a language by speaking it. > > Lori > > > On 5/22/07 5:18 AM, "Nancy Hagerty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I don't think that we can aford to "skip" the fluency practice. >> >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/21/07 10:49 PM >>> >>> Skip the fluency and work on inference and questioning techniques... " What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value." — Art Costa, emeritus professor, California State University _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
