Fluency has become a widely discussed topic in education today. There are many opinions among educators and researchers on what fluency means, and how it should be addressed in a classroom setting. I researched four articles from respected journals, and in this paper I will attempt to define fluency and measurement tools. I will also discuss Repeated Reading as a viable strategy for teaching Fluency in the second grade classroom. I chose this particular topic, because I felt it would be most beneficial in influencing my own literacy instruction. Fluency has been recognized by the National Reading Panel Report in 2000 (NRP; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) as being an essential component for success in learning to read. “If children do not acquire the fundamentals of reading, which is based largely on reading fluency, at a young age it places them at a considerable disadvantage in their future academic pursuits.” The primary grades are the essential point to begin fluency instruction. Fluency can be defined as the ability to read text fluently, automatically, and with proper expression, resulting in comprehension. Carnine, Silbert, Kame”ennui &Tarver, 2004 (as cited by Therrien & Kubina, 2006, p.156) state that, “Fluency serves as a bridge between decoding words and comprehension.” Therefore, fluency is not just reading quickly, but involves comprehension and prosodic features. Reading fluency has been shown to be a better predictor of comprehension than the use of other methods such as questioning, retelling, and cloze. In an article by Nichols, Rupley & Rasinski (2009), they cite the work of Chall (1996), where he proposes that there are developmental reading stages for children pres... ... middle of paper ... ...graders learning fluency techniques. Fluency must become a vital part of a primary reading program. Research has shown that the struggling reader often has less time to practice fluency, when if fact, they would benefit most from additional instruction. Dowhower’s study (as sited by Roundy & Roundy (2009), p.6) claims, “The effects of repeated reading are so strong that it should be woven into the fabric of daily literacy instruction.” Also in the same paper it is stated, ”Ultimately, akin to a domino effect, as students improve their fluency they will improve their comprehension, increase their reading level, increase their reading-oriented self-confidence and expand their understanding and enjoyment of language.” (Roundy & Roundy, 2009) Repeated reading is too important to not be included in every literacy curriculum for every child.
With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
… Being read to has been identified as a source of children’s early literacy development, including knowledge of the alphabet, print, and characteristics of written language. By the age of two, children who are read to regularly display greater language comprehension, larger vocabularies and higher cognitive skills than their
Lesaux, N., & Siegel, L. (2003). The Developmental of Reading in Children Who Speak English as a Second Language. Developmental Psychology. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.39.6.1005.
Acknowledged by Muuss (1967) was the fact that age norms described within stages are approximations, and how such ideas could provide guidance and insight into a child’s learning limitations and abilities. Evidence to suggest that this knowledge can help to address limitations in child cognitive development exists (Ojemann & Pritchett, 1963; as cited in Muuss, 1967). Even so, these proposals are not noticeably grounded by concrete
"Reading." The Gale Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence. Ed. Jerome Kagan and Susan B. Gall. Online Edition. Detroit: Gale, 2007.
...ed by most, and how dyslexia can cause problems with reading comprehension. It also discussed ways that we can mitigate these problems for dyslexic people, but these skills can and should be used by all learners. Reading comprehension is a perishable skill, one that if you don’t work on increasing your reading ability by building your vocabulary, learn to read effectively, or using the correct reading strategies for the type of reading material being studied will diminish. Even with the largest vocabulary, if the words are not understood literacy cannot be achieved. Literacy is the key to comprehensive reading. It also gave some of the tools for reading and understanding different types of literature and how to get the important information out of each one. Edmund Burk said “To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting” (Gallagher, 2003, p. 11).
Wang, C., Algozzine, B., Ma, W., & Porfeli, E. (2011). Oral reading rates of second-grade
Four phases of reading development have been established (Ehri 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999) : pre-alphabetic, partial alphabetic, full alphabetic and consolidated alphabetic. These phases has led to the core understanding of children's reading development, apart from the pre-alphabetic phase phonological awareness skills are seen throughout the phases.
...ents to make a good reader. Therefore, without a certain piece of reading students skills the scaffolding is unstable. Due to a student’s faulty scaffolding, reading does not work cohesive to make the end product a successfully understood story. This concerns me. If I feel like they are falling behind on these skills and their other teachers, my colleagues, are not teaching them these skills, I will and do my best at making it appropriate for my class. Without reading skills, they will be faced with horrible ramifications from their problems to comprehend and understand the vocabulary words they see in their textbooks.
The second stage of cognitive development is Preoperational Stage (age 2 to age 7). During this stage, children’s “vocabulary and grammatical structures rapidly develops” (Ormrod, 2012, 149), and children uses their “intuition rather than on conscious awareness of logical principles” (Ormrod, 2012, 149).
Most administrators and educators, if asked what is the area that needs the most improvement in schools today, would answer reading. Children seem to battle with reading at almost every grade level. As reported by Trelease (2006) students do not read very much. In one reported study, 90% of the students studied devoted only 1 percent of their free time to reading and 30% to watching television. Fifty percent of the students read for an average of four minutes or less per day, 30% read two minutes per day, and 10% read nothing at all (p. 1). These statistics only serve to worsen the fear of students low reading abilities. Educators have developed a myriad of programs to improve students’ comprehension, retention, and higher level thinking skills. These skills are especially important in the improvement of scores on the state mandated assessments.
Reading and writing is a key part of everyone’s life. There has been some encouraging levels of reading development in primary school assessments. According to the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy report (2015), 95.5% of students achieve at or above the national minimum standard of reading. It is important to know effective ways to teach reading so children can become active problem solvers to enable them to read for meaning or for fun. Over the years, there has been a big amount of research into the most effective ways to teach reading skills to students. There are some systematically taught key skills and strategies that help achieve these levels of reading. Some of these skills include phonological awareness, phonemic awareness,
According to Temple et. Al, there are components for reading. “Reading is the act of getting meaning from a written text.” (Temple & Ogle & Crawford & Freppon, 2005, p.7) There are steps to learn to read; first step is “word recognition.” This activity is that readers recognize letters and words. Next step is “phonemes” which is the smallest sounds in language. Readers who in “phonemic awareness” are able to know how to make sounds with letters. In “comprehension” step, readers are able to understand what they are reading. They can improve reading ability by expanding knowledge of vocabulary. If they can understand words faster than previous time and accurately, they are on “reading fluency” step. The last step, which is “interpretation” or also known as “critical reading”, is a time when they are able to understand author’s thought and mind by reading their words and arguments. National Reading Panel categorized literacy by areas of alphabetic, fluency, comprehension, teacher education and reading instruction, computer technology, and reading instruction. Alphabetic includes
It is a “reading world” we live in and students should be guaranteed every opportunity to succeed in this information driven society. Children today are overwhelmed with more reading material than ever before on billboard, television, the Internet and at school, causing reading to become a relevant and essential need in the life of every child (Lumpkin 1972). Being able to read has become the core of our information driven society. Yet, reading difficulties continue to plague the foundation of our education system creating a problem that only seems to be escalating. Hasselbring affirms that reading difficulties are a serious concern to our nation’s students claiming that, “as many as 20 percent of 17 year olds... [are] functionally illiterate and 44 percent of all high school students…[are] described as semi-illiterate”(2004). This is a harsh reality to face – a reality that stems from difficulties developed at the elementary level where reading complications arise and usually go unchecked. These reading difficulties are carri...
How can what we know about the development of readers inform reading comprehension instruction? Reading instruction typically starts in kindergarten with the alphabetic principle, simple word blending, and sight word recognition. Texts read by early readers usually include very little to comprehend. As children develop reading ability, they are able read more complex texts requiring greater comprehension skills. Separate and explicit instruction in reading comprehension is crucial because the ability to comprehend develops in its own right, independent of word recognition. The ability to read words and sentences is clearly important, but as readers develop, these skills are less and less closely correlated with comprehension abilities. (Aarnoutse & van Leeuwe, 2000) While no one would argue that word blending and sight word reading skills be omitted from early reading instruction, vocabulary and listening comprehension may be at least as important in achieving the even...