Let's continue our conversation from last week...
With last week’s assessments and observations of one student in mind, please read the following article: Fluency: Instructional Guidelines and Student Activities.
What strategies could you implement for the student that would best support the student’s needs?
Monelle Dalman and Rebecca Minerd
Because my student’s Literature and narrative SS scores were significantly higher than informational SS and Science scores, I would attribute the discrepancies to academic vocabulary and background knowledge. Because accuracy is required BEFORE a student can read for fluency and prosody and as per the article, I feel the best strategy to implement with her would be to “introduce new or difficult words…and provide practice reading these words before read[ing] on [her] own.“ I also think that once the new vocabulary is learned, repeated reading might be beneficial to her for informational, content-based texts.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a great idea! If the student practices the words prior to reading the passage, then she will be more fluent as the passage is read with the new (difficult terms) vs. trying to figure out the words and gain prosody at the same time.
DeleteYes-"Repeated" is so important and what I am about to blog about below!
DeleteI love the idea of introducing new or difficult words BEFORE reading on the students own. I actually tried this with one of my struggling readers with their fluency journals in the past. We would explore words that they were unfamiliar with and the meanings. There was an increase in her fluency when she was familiar with the difficult words!
DeleteMy student that I practiced with last week was a 3/4 across the board. She really could have been a 4, the student just needed to read with a little more expression. Based on the "Guidelines for Instruction", I would model fluent reading, then have the student reread and record themselves on their own. I would incorporate more expression as I read, and I try to do this when I read my daily read aloud. I also let my students hear the audio, so that they are able to hear the sound of the characters voice. This also includes providing opportunities for children to hear a range of texts read fluently and with expression. There is a lot of figurative language and onomatopoeia in the books I read, which allows the student more opportunity to use expression when she is reading. I feel like Readers' Theatre would be a great way to incorporate fluency and allow the student to take on the role of the character as they read to help increase increase expression with prosody.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of Readers' Theatre! I think Nila would really love this because her personality is so animated .
DeleteReader's theater is a great idea! The students love it and it is a great opportunity for them to practice fluency, expression and prosody. Also, sometimes taking on a "character" will give shy students a little bit of a confidence boost so they are more comfortable speaking/reading in front of others.
DeleteTo best support my student’s needs, I could continue to model reading a passage fluently and with expression, have him read the passage to me one-on-one during the week and discuss the words that he is having a hard time with, and also have him and another student, who is able to read the passage at a more fluent level, partner read a passage. This would give him additional practice with the passage, as well as giving him more chances to hear the passage read fluently and with expression. I would also make sure to remind him that he does not have to read the passage quickly, since he read some parts of the passage last week quickly. Before the initial reading, I could also discuss some words that I anticipate being difficult for him to read and we could practice them so that he will have seen them and read them before he reads.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of previewing the vocabulary words! This makes a huge difference.
DeleteRepeated reading with fluency. Over the past two weeks I have introduced my younger students to the book "I Got the Rhythm" by Connie Shofield-Morrison. First time, we listened to it with a read-aloud. Second time, we echoed the phrases from each page to a rhythm with a beat itself. Third, we listened to it with a read-aloud by someone else with a different voice quality while listening for our favorite place that the main character found the rhythm. Then, we discussed the favorite places! Fourth, we demonstrated the different places the main character found the rhythm.
ReplyDeleteLove, love, LOVE this! I bet the students did, too! :)
DeleteThis is awesome! What a wonderful way to incorporate literacy and music!
DeleteGreat job! I love that book and it is great book for repeated reading practice!
DeleteI can use the echo reading idea in my classes!
DeleteMy students each have a fluency journal in Bookcreator. The weekly passage is a social studies or science passage incorporating academic vocabulary. I will read the passage to them first, to model prosody. They will then reread the same passage throughout the week and record themselves doing so. I think when they go back and listen to their recording, they can hear if they are lacking in prosody, and hopefully on the next read, it will improve. Prosody and comprehension are my students’ weakest reading skills at this point.
ReplyDeleteLove this, as well! Are the students enjoying it at all? Maybe you could also incorporate the self-reflection provided last week into the Book Creator format. That way they are thinking about their reading! :)
DeleteI like how your students are going back and listening to their recordings. This is a great way for them to kind of self-monitor or self-assess how they are reading and if there any words they are struggling with.
DeleteI used book creator to create one for my ELA skills students. I appreciate this fantastic idea!
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ReplyDeleteOne of the ideas from the article suggested poetry. I have used lots of the other ideas listed. However, poetry is one I have not incorporated lots. I think next week I will try to generate some poems to use for fluency also related to the topic discussed in our decodable reader using the word patterns that we are studying this week. That way the students are familiar with the patterns as they are practicing on their fluency journals. I will also try to find some poems in Epic to read for fun but to also model prosody.
ReplyDeleteI've always loved poetry because of the different inflections that can be used. For me, this would be a great way to show how many different connotations there can be which can help with prosody.
DeleteUsing poetry is a fantastic idea! I like your idea and may use it too! Thanks
DeleteReading poetry is the great equalizer because you have to practice and really think about the cadence of the lines!
DeleteMy student is a 7th-grade student reading at 172 correct words per minute with only one mistake. She has a strong foundation of reading fluency, but there are always opportunities for growth and refinement. Because one of the things I noticed about her reading was a lack of expression, here are some strategies to improve upon tone and emotion in her reading:
ReplyDelete1. Reader's theater. Improve emotion by taking the roles of specific characters.
2. Emotion Cards. Have the student pick an emotion card and read a passage with that tone or emotion in their voice.
3. Choral Reading. Have students read a passage together, focusing on expression and tone. Identify the mood of the text before reading chorally and have students match that expression in their reading.
Seriously, am I scoring this correctly? I only scored a 153 myself.
DeleteSo, I'm hoping this is a good thing... but I feel like the past two weeks of the blog has left me with more questions than actual answers. So I made sure I worked a fluency practice into my ELA skills this week, as that was not feasible for last week's plans. I wanted to make sure I was caught up with what needed to be accomplished. An entire folder of practice passages was shared, so I feel very prepared with what to use. I was easily able to determine my practice student had a reading fluency score of 118. I was unable to download either the prosody or self reflection forms as I do not have a Cox account. But just moving with the GRASP, I had issues determining what would be considered the norm for an 8th grader. Most reading fluency scores I found online was geared toward early elementary. Even using the same source as this week's article, Reading Rockets, I was only able to find up to 6th grade. However, per that article, https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/fluency/articles/fluency-norms-chart-2017-update, a Spring word count is projected at 204... That seemed like a big gap if my 8th grader was approximately half of that, so I completed it myself, and got a score of 153. I love to read, and am an excellent oral reader. As material changes by grade level, I'm assuming the complexity of what our GRASP score was based on is why we score lower than a 6th grader, but with that being said, I find it especially confusing to conduct this if there's no clear information, guidance, or parameters on what my students should be scoring? As for activities per the article that I would like to incorporate, many of them are already incorporated into my class. When I taught literature, I loved using tape assisted reading, and the excellent tools gallopade offers in our social studies program, as well as other platforms like Commonlit, make the continued use of modeled professional reading a possibility. We do use choral reading and modeled reading in my class in numerous circumstances. One of the things I want to focus on moving forward is not reading simply for the words, but reading providing inflection, intonation, and other measures of prosody.
ReplyDeleteI will share the files with you! If there are any other files, let me know and
DeleteI can share them with you.
I find it interesting that there isn't fluency scores for older students. The oral reading fluency assessment from Cox only goes to 6th grade. Weird!
Thank you Angela! I got those. I appreciate you! And yes, I wish I could find more that was geared toward middle school, but I"m sure that's coming. I did find this article over the weekend that made me realize... everyone... no matter where they are... is seeing this, in case anyone is interested: https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/02/literacy-crisis-reading-comprehension-college.html
DeleteChristie, I totally understand the confusing information regarding the fluency ranges. I have often disagreed with many of the “target ranges” especially once a student is reading above 120-130 words per minute with high accuracy. This is where prosody comes into play. We don’t want readers to sound like they are speed reading. We don’t even want them reading so fast that it is difficult to comprehend. We want them to absorb the text as they read. Depending on the text, an appropriate rate range could differ. Some may be read at a slower rate but still be completely fluent. Often I did not screen for fluency once a student was maintaining a rate over 120 wpm for that reason. I did monitor their prosody, though, and would give them guidance on improving that.
DeleteChristie, I can relate!!! I am still struggling to find a connection for my classroom
DeleteI believe the student I did my observation on last week would benefit from listening to more books read aloud to her that model fluent reading and give her more opportunities to practice reading fluently. I also would like to introduce Reader’s Theater to her and some of the other students to further enhance their fluency skills.
ReplyDeleteFor my students the best way to support is to give more reading opportunities and modeling not only how to read with inflection but how to use that inflection to deepen understanding of the work. With science terminology, I have been trying to get students to look up the proper pronunciation of difficult words as well as modeling the sounds the phonemes make. I believe for the middle school student is it important to give them tools on where to look for pronunciation guides and accurately use them. Luckily, Google is a great help for how to pronounce different words. As they progress in academics, they will be faced more often than not with terms that teachers might not break down for them. I love for my students to look you new words and then see them take ownership of the vocabulary as they learn it. Oddly enough, I also like to use closed captioning on my videos that we watch in class to help as well. The practice of reading along as they hear different voices helps students to become more independent with their reading as they engage more fully between text and sound.
ReplyDeleteI think that my students would benefit from Readers theatre! That is something that I have done in the years previous but I have not with my students this year! This year we have focused on novels or comic novels where the student can get into characters and take on the role of the character they are given. Through this we model fluent reading and the students have an opportunity to read out loud! I also think that my students would benefit from more opportunities for student-adult reading.
ReplyDeleteI am excited to try the ORF with my students! I like the self reflection component. I am interested to see how my students rate themselves. I like Heather's idea of adding poetry and Beth's idea of readers theatre. So many things to try!
ReplyDeleteAs I was reading this week's article, I began thinking about how I can do more within my daily read alouds and remembered something that Monelle had shared with me one day last year. Monelle was scanning some pages from a book she was planning to read to her students so that they could follow along as she read to them. I think this it really beneficial because while I do read with expression, I want students to "see" not just hear the changes in my tone and how I read punctuation and so forth. I realized how important this could be after thinking about this week's article, remembering my conversation with Monelle, and recently hearing a student stumble over a word that I had read many times during my read aloud...she was listening but was imagining a different spelling of the word. I am about to start a new book with 3 of my 4 classes and plan to scan the pages in the hopes that some will follow along.
ReplyDeleteThe student I tested last week I feel could benefit from activities like reader’s theatre or poetry readings. Since she gets nervous reading aloud, and I think reads too fast when reading independently, reader’s theater or poetry reading could help her practice reading in front of others and give her the opportunity to have repeated reading opportunities to practice her prosody.
ReplyDeleteThe student I tested last week would need some basic independent level books in order to build up to where he should be. I believe listening to others read aloud the same book that he would read or after he reads would benefit this student. Listening to himself would also help. I think hearing it repetitively while looking at the text is key. I also believe this student needs some phonemic and phonics lessons would be beneficial as well(but that's hard when you are in upper elementary) He just isn't where he needs to be.
ReplyDeleteSeeing as I do not access fluency and do not have a specific student's needs in mind I am considering what I can do with every student I teach to increase fluency and porosity. I have added read alouds to some of my units. I will consider having students take turns reading aloud for the class instead of me reading.
ReplyDelete