One thing I really gathered this week from bot the Rasinski and Deeney articles was how important it is to be cautious when assessing reading fluency. As Deeney displayed even when a student passes the accuracy portion of a reading assessment it does not mean the comprehend the story or could retell it accurately. Fluency is such a multi-faceted phenomenon it is an injustice to the students when teachers fail to test it correctly, really. It is unfair to a student to just figure out whether or not they can read 'accurately' and quickly considering they might not gaining anything from the texts.
As step in the right direction then is to focus on understanding when teaching reading fluency. Rasinski's article brought up the good point that modeling fluent reading is beneficial, but only when couple with the students repeatedly reading on their own. That is where things like coaching comes into play in order to help students gain the most out of reading as well as activities such as read alouds, reader's theatre and word wall's with high-frequency words come which will help to build students excitement and confidence in reading and understanding.
Providing many forms of things for students to read in your classroom will help children learn to be more fluent and comfortable reading. Coaching and pairing students will also be a helpful technique.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the idea of the reader's theater. I think it can be presented as "drama" and the kids will not even know they are focusing on developing their "reading" skills. I also like how the book gave us several resources for finding good books to use in a reader's theater setting.
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