I think one of the easiest ways to assess a student’s overall fluency is to have them do think-aloud’s or read-aloud’s for a specific passage or book. Of course, students need to be explicitly taught how to read fluently by having an expert model what it means to read accurately, at a good pace, and with expression. Accuracy is probably best assessed using a running record so that you can accurately identify where the student is struggling. Since the whole purpose of teaching students to become fluent readers is to improve their comprehension, a re-tell should be done after a student reads a passage to determine if their comprehension is improving due to better fluency.
In my field placement fluency is not something being focused on yet since it is only Kindergarten. However, as far as word identification I have noticed a huge improvement since the beginning of the year. Blending and segmenting CVC words has been the main focus, as well as learning sight words. Earlier in the year words were only read by saying each individual phoneme them blending them to make a word, but now over half the class can read CVC words on command, and are also familiar with many of the sight words featured on Pre-Primer word lists.
I definetly agree with read-alouds being a great way to incorporate modeling fluency. I think Readers Theater is also great way to practice fluency. It is a fun and very informal activities that manages to combine in reading accuracy, reading speed, and prosody. As far as assessments go, I agree that running records are a great way to keep track of student’s progress. According to Tompkins, “teachers can categorize miscues according to the semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic cueing systems in order to examine what word-identification strategies students are using” (p. 86). The amount of material that can be evaluated from this assessment can allow teachers to examine just exactly what they need to focus on with the individual student. In my placement I have noticed that students struggle with reading speed and prosody. As second graders that are becoming better at recognizing words but they don’t pay any attention to the expression in their voices, and their speed varies depending on the difficulty of the reading.
ReplyDeleteI too was going to suggest Readers Theater! I think it is a great FUN way for students to recognize the need for prosody in their reading. It would be helpful to have an expert read a passage first so the students who are struggling can see what they need to do when reading. Another thing that could be a fun way to get students to boost their reading speed and accuracy would be to have them read and reread books that they really enjoy and are familiar with. This allows students to really get to know the words in the books so that then they can focus on speed and prosody. This will also help with comprehension since the story will, in theory, become ingrained in their minds. Unfortunately do not see this very much in my placement since it is a kindergarten placement. However, like Caitlin, I have seen a dramatic increase in most of the student's word recognition.
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