Two years ago, I worked with a fourth grade class of struggling readers who
where from 6 months to 3 years below grade level at the start of the year.
(Let it be said here, the regular classroom teacher was also struggling and on
an assistance plan. Part of my job was to help him develop more effective
teaching techniques.) I modified a process that I read about in one of Tim's
books. The first day, we read the text for the week to the students.
Jennifer,
Thank you for sharing this plan.? I'm wondering what texts you used - fiction,
nonfiction, poetry, etc.?
Martha
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: mosaic@literacyworkshop.org
Sent: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 1:31 pm
Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Repeated Readings for Fluency - Question for Tim
Alright, Tim and Elaine...I am going to be brave and post a few thoughts
here. I am a fan of both of you...and I can see more than a little common
ground. Somewhere, I read that a true definition of fluency INCLUDES
comprehension.
If we say a fluent reader must also need to comprehend, then we can take the
research that seems contradictory and it makes more sense.
When I am working with my struggling readers with recorded books (to build
word recognition automaticity) I spend an even greater amount of time teaching
them the comprehension strategies. Every classroom I walk into, every
colleague that gets model lessons from me, knows that I make very clear to
students
that the basic skills of reading--the phonics, fluency, are the means to an
end and the end is comprehension. It is all about balance and too often, I
think, when we as professionals lose that sense of balance, we get into
trouble.
If you will permit me, I would like to share a personal story here...
Two years ago, I worked with a fourth grade class of struggling readers who
where from 6 months to 3 years below grade level at the start of the year.
(Let it be said here, the regular classroom teacher was also struggling and on
an assistance plan. Part of my job was to help him develop more effective
teaching techniques.) I modified a process that I read about in one of Tim's
books. The first day, we read the text for the week to the students. I modeled
a
comprehension strategy and we had a rather deep discussion about the
author's purpose, the main ideas, vocabulary, character traits or the author's
language choices.We used graphic organizers to make text structures explicit.
On
the second day, we read the text again...but it was an echo read. This time, I
made explicit a fluency component, such as observing punctuation, phrasing,
etc, and then tied it back into the comprehension strategies we worked on the
day before. (i.e....how does changing the intonation of what a character
says change the meaning). On the third day, the students read with a buddy and
as they read, they were to keep a pack of post its by their side. If they
noticed something interesting or important they were to mark it and we had a
share session afterwards. Again, while they knew they wanted to improve their
accuracy, the comprehension aspect was the end goal. On the fourth day,we
would
practice the story for a performance.The students self evaluated their oral
fluency based on a rubric. On Friday, we performed the piece for an audience
and I sent the piece home as a "lucky listener" project. (The kids read it to
as many people as they could find who would sign the back of it. The kids
goal was to read it to more people than anyone else.)
After about 6 months of this, the students were given the SRI-Scholastic
Reading Inventory and most of the kids made huge gains. I have been told that
100 lexiles was a year's growth on this comprehension test. These kids made an
average of 400 lexiles growth. When the kids read orally at their
instructional level and I checked reading rates, I was interested to find
growth but it
was not exactly within grade level norms. Yet on our state test here in
Maryland, I had 74% of them meet proficiency in reading comprehension.
What this tells me, is that by teaching fluency as a means to comprehension,
and by making clear that the end goal is comprehension, not simply reading
faster, we can improve comprehension over all.
Jennifer
Maryland
In a message dated 7/8/2007 10:42:02 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Those quotes are correct. I think the more recent research, though, is
> moving us forward. We have found correlations between .50 - .60
> between
> fluency and comprehension for older students. Not huge, but not
> insignificant either
Tim. I'd love to see the studies you refer to. And again, as you've
pointed out, correlation is not causation and therefore, it is entirely
possible and maybe even likely, that comprehension is influencing
fluency-- or at the very least, the relationship is reciprocal rather
than it's fluency that's influencing comprehension, right?
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