Fostering Fluency

The main idea I picked up on in each of the readings was that reading fluency is an ongoing process that has to be taught explicitly. No matter what the age of a student is they are never too young to pick up a lower level book and refresh their basic fluency skills. For many students word-for-word reading has gotten them through but just barely. After many years of barely squeaking by they often encounter many difficulties with reading that are ultimately discouraging and detrimental to comprehension. The one-minute reading screens seem to be a great time efficient way to identify students who are struggling with fluency, or a component of fluency. However, my greatest concern is that some students may have learned to disguise their lack of comprehension because they are capable of reading aloud to sound as though they are deriving some meaning from the text.
I loved how fostering fluency was explained as a very explicit process. For instance, echo and choral reading. These both will help students see how the components of fluency are relevant to them and their understanding. I think something funny and additional to correctly modeling fluency would be to read to them and show how it sounds when someone uses the components incorrectly. For example, having the teacher or a student reading a statement, that could be viewed as sad by the context, cheerfully and joyfully. Above I inserted a Wordle which can be a source for creating a word cloud for new units, or when reviewing previously covered. More over, word walls seemed to be a great way to engage the students when selecting the words and creating them. The word walls could also serve as reminders when students are unsure of how to spell or use a word. In Dr. Gilrane's class this past Friday we talked about sorting, and how it can be effective for introducing new words more so than having a word of the week. Basically students are constantly adding to their vocabularies and reading skills. Even as adults we are all still learning. How many times have you been reading or engaged in a conversation and came across an unfamiliar word? Did you ask what it meant, go home and look it up, or do you still not know what it means? I think we shouldn't assume our students will do what we would do necessarily when they are in a situation where they are presented with unfamiliar language or texts. We should treat reading and fluency as a process that is continual and provide them with many outlets to help them or to show them how to help themselves.

Below is the link to a YouTube video I found of two young students echo reading to one another.