The two articles and the chapter in Classrooms That Work were about reading fluency. The article entitled "Creating Fluent Readers" discussed the three dimensions of reading fluency which are accuracy, automaticity and prosidy. Accuracy is referring to how well a reader can sound out the words of the text without error. Automaticity is how little effort it takes to process the text while reading. Prosidy is referring to how much correct expression and punctuation a reader uses while reading. The article "One-Minute Fluency Measures: Mixed Messages in Assessment and Instruction" discusses the methods used for fluency assessment and whether those methods are effective in informing instruction. The author believes that the common method of assessing fluency, having students read a passage for one minute while recording errors to calculate an accuracy rate, is not always the best way to inform fluency instruction. She believes that this method leaves other aspects of fluency such as endurance and comprehension out. Chapter four in the book outlines fluency and gives some good ideas for helping to promote reading fluency in the classroom. Some of the teaching ideas are word walls, echo reading, choral reading, and reader's theater.
I was placed in a third grade classroom for my field studies class and I saw the students practicing one-minute fluency tests. The teacher would have the students practice reading the passages to each other and recording each others errors. The teacher told me that her class always did really well on their statewide assessments on fluency because they practiced so much. While I think that practice is useful the teacher did not use these assessments to inform her instruction. She never stopped the activity to discuss the meaning of the passages so she didn't have a grasp on whether the students were comprehending what they were reading.
In my classroom I plan to use a lot of the techniques that Allington suggests in the textbook. I definitely plan to have a word wall and I would like to use reader's theatre because I think the students would really get into it.
Awesome post, Carrie! You definitely saw these one-minute fluency assessments first hand then, didn't you? I love that you have something personal to connect to the readings. I totally agree with your comment about the fluency practice. Teachers need to be aware of their students comprehension capabilities. I hope you'll continue to bring up your personal connections from your classroom experience!
ReplyDeleteWow, you summarized our readings on fluency very well. It was clear and concise. I also think it really cool that you got to observe a teacher's use of one-minute fluency tests. Although there were benefits to the test (that's always good), I like that you were able to see that these tests were not the best judges of fluency, since the teacher was still unaware of the students' understanding of the text. I guess that goes to show that some assessments are not good for what they are trying to assess and that we, as teachers, need to challenge our students above what some tests require. This post was great!
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