Fluency Instruction for Our Struggling Readers

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Fluency Instruction for Our Struggling Readers

• Frederick County Public Schools
• Office of Secondary English Reading
• January 2005

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GoalsWorkshop participants will learn ways to

• Assess whether students should receive fluency
  instruction/time on task with the Jamestown
  series.
• Teach fluency using Jamestown Timed Readings Plus
  or Timed Readings in Literature

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The Voluntary State Curriculum Standard

• General Reading Processes
• Students will read orally with accuracy and
  expression at a rate that sounds like speech.

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The Voluntary State Curriculum Indicators

• C1 Read orally at an appropriate rate.
• C2 Read grade-level text with both high
  accuracy and appropriate pacing, intonation and
  expression.

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The Jamestown Reading Series

• Allows us to gauge student reading rates and to
  have students develop appropriate pacing.
• Allows students to connect pacing and accuracy.

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Jamestown Does Not Address

• Intonation
• Expression

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Help with Intonation and Expression

• Teachers should use read aloud/think aloud,
  readers theatre, echo reading, and choral
  reading to model and teach intonation and
  expression. Additional in-services will be
  available to help teachers develop these
  instructional tools at a later date.

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Accuracy

• Readers must be able to read
• (sound out words) or recognize words
• in text with minimal errors.

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At the elementary level--Assessing AccuracyWord
Recognition Accuracy Rate

• of words read correctly
• total of words
• Running Records
• Modified Miscue Analysis
• IRI

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Accuracy

• Rasinski Blevins NRP
• Independent 99-100 95-100 95
• Instructional 92-98 90-95 90
• Frustrational lt 92 lt 90 lt90

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Automaticity/Rate

• Reading words with no noticeable cognitive or
  mental effort.
• This allows mental effort to be reserved for
  comprehension

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• It is critical that students get a great deal of
  practice reading stories at their independent
  reading level to develop automaticity.
• (Beck Juel, 1195 Samuels, Schermer, and
  Reinking, 1992)
• This is why we include independent practice for
  each strategic reading level and why we give
  reading as homework.

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Prosody

• The ability to divide text into meaningful
  chunks, and read with appropriate expression,
  smoothness, and volume.

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• A dysfluent reader
• Brown/
• bear brown/
• bear what/
• do/
• you see.

• A fluent reader
• Brown bear/
• Brown bear/
• What do you see?/

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Activity 1

• Find a partner. Read The Fallacy of Value Added
  Measures. Reader 1 reads aloud while Reader 2
  rates prosody using the Rubric for Fluency
  Evaluation. Record score.
• Reader 2 reads while Reader 1 rates prosody.
  Record score.
• Repeat. Record.
• Repeat.Record
• What do you notice? What impact does this have
  for our teaching of fluency?

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Jamestown Fluency Clarifying the Process

• Who gets Jamestown?
• All students in Directed level English courses.
  All students in Merit level courses whom you have
  assessed as needing help with prosody and reading
  rate/accuracy.
• Students in Honors English do not get Jamestown.

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How to Assess Merit level students

• Have the student read an on grade level passage
  and use the fluency scale/rubric to determine
  fluency abilities. If in doubt, repeat until you
  have a clear sense of where the student fits on
  the scale.
• Any student with a score of 3 or below should
  get Jamestown.

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Assessment continued

• Break students into small groups. Have a class
  list available. Have students take turns reading
  a given passage. Listen to one student at a
  time. You will have to repeat this class
  activity several times to be able to assess all
  the students in your Merit level courses. Of
  course, choose passages for read aloud/fluency
  checks that you are using for a planned strategic
  reading lesson. When in doubt, start the student
  with Jamestown.

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Jamestown Timed ReadingsProcedure

• Student is assigned a reading from the Jamestown
  series at the level the teacher thinks is best
  for a starting place.
• Student spends 7 minutes approx. repeatedly
  reading and practicing a passage. If the student
  feels he/she understands the passage and can read
  it quickly, the student agrees to time that day.

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continued

• If the student feels he/she is not ready to be
  timed, the student keeps the same passage the
  next time fluency is done.
• Students being timed all start when the teacher
  says go. The teacher sets the timer and
  records the time as it passes in ten second
  intervals. When the student finishes reading the
  passage, the student writes the last time
  recorded on the board. This will be recorded on
  the chart.

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continued

• The student then answers the questions that go
  with the passage. The student checks responses
  and records the accuracy on the chart.
• Students who read with 90 accuracy and who read
  the passage in under __ minutes get a new piece
  for practice the next time.
• Students who do not read with 90 accuracy or who
  take more than ___ minutes should return to the
  same piece and practice reading that piece again,
  until the students believe they are ready for
  retesting.

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continued.

• When a student uses the same level text and shows
  90 accuracy and the appropriate reading rate
  three times in a row, the student should move to
  the next level text.
• Once a student shows he/she can read the on-grade
  level text with 90 accuracy at the appropriate
  reading rate (three times in a row), the student
  discontinues use of the Jamestown series.
• Teachers can continue to have students use other
  fluency building activities.

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Activity 2

• Practice reading the given passage. Then, get
  ready for timing.
• Presenter will write times in ten second
  intervals.
• When you finish reading, record your time.
• Answer the questions provided.
• Check your answers (key on overhead).
• Record on the chart the number of answers
  correct. A number of 9 correct or higher means
  the student has achieved the accuracy rate
  desired.

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For middle school only

• Teachers should use the Passage A materials (10
  question set) for timed testing purposes.
• Teachers may use the Passage B materials if they
  use the Jamestown readings for something other
  than fluency.

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The Research

• Timothy Rasinksi, Ph.D.
• Report of the National Reading Panel
• Wiley Blevins
• National Assessment of Educational Progress
  (NAEP)
• Put Reading First

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Thanks to

• Carla Zamerelli-Clifford
• Curriculum Specialist Elementary Language
  Arts/Social Studies, K-5

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Questions?