Reading Fluency

In a math classroom, the teacher cannot neglect the need for providing a print rich environment. “Word walls are a technique that many classroom teachers use to help students become fluent with the language of mathematics. It is vital that vocabulary be taught as part of a lesson and not be taught as a separate activity” (Draper, 2012). Draper acknowledges the fact that words in mathematics may be confusing for students to study as “words and phrases that mean one thing in the world of mathematics mean another in every day context. For example, the word “similar” means “alike” in everyday usage, whereas in mathematics similar has to have proportionality” (Draper, 2012). Fites (2002) argues that the way a math problem is written drastically will effect a student’s performance, not just in reading the problem, but in solving the math equation as well. There is where the misinterpreting of different word meanings in math comes into play. Fites continues with the importance of understanding vocabulary not just in reading but for math as well with the correlation between improved vocabularies in math yields improvement on verbal problem solving

My early reading experiences reflect the history that Vogt and Shearer (2011) describe in the first chapter of Reading Specialists and Literacy Coaches in the Real World. The basal reading programs of the 1970s and 1980s included “leveled readers, phonics activities, and a great deal of comprehension skill practice, usually found on the pages of the accompanying workbooks. The programs also included highly structured, detailed teacher’s guides, with different lesson plans for each of the three instructional groups” (Vogt & Shearer, 2011, p.13).

Many students were reading below grade level, and Tyner needed an intensive reading model that could fill in the gaps of each student’s literacy. She began using a basal reading program called Early Steps (Morris, Tyner, & Perney, 2000). Tyner decided to use some of the components of Early Steps to develop her own reading model that would focus on the needs of beginning and struggling readers. The Small-Group Differentiated Reading Model consists of a framework specifically designed for beginning and struggling readers so that they may progress through the appropriate developmental stages and become proficient

he most fundamental responsibility of schools is teaching students to read. Indeed, the future success of all students hinges upon their ability to become proficient readers. Recent scientific studies have allowed us to understand more than ever before how literacy develops, why some children have difficulty, and what constitutes best instructional practice. Scientists now estimate that fully 95 percent of all children can be taught to read. Yet, in spite of all our knowledge, statistics reveal an alarming prevalence of struggling and poor readers that is not limited to any one segment of society:

Reading is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information which is essential in being a productive member of society. If and when a student missed an opportunity to learn the skills necessary for reading, it’s has a profound impact on their lives. As educators we realize that teaching all children to read requires that every child receive excellent reading instruction. We are also aware that children, who are struggling with reading must receive

In evaluating the different types of reading interventions, I found that paired reading is the most commonly used to increase fluency. According to the report of The National Reading Panel (2000), guided repeated oral reading is the most effective procedure for developing reading fluency (Kuhn & Stahl, 2000; Rasinski & Hoffman, 2003). Paired reading was originally developed

Reading fluency is considered an integral component of the reading process and it has a big presence in the classroom. Its importance became evident since the National Reading Panel (2000) pronounced fluency instruction and assessment an essential and was thus incorporated into the reading First guidelines of No Child Left Behind in 2002 (Shelton, Altwerger, &Jordan, 2009). Reading fluency has been defined in many ways; an outcome of decoding and comprehension, a contributor to both decoding and comprehension, the ability to recognize words rapidly and accurately, the connections

What is Fluency? Fluency is the ability to read smoothly and automatically, with expression and attention to punctuation. Correspondingly, reading with sufficient accuracy and fluency supports overall reading comprehension.

The evaluation of the Leveled Literacy Intervention is being requested by our district superintendent, Dr. Craig Witherspoon, to determine the success of the implementation and the efficacy of the program. During this last year, our district piloted the Leveled Literacy Intervention program throughout the district with our Tier 3 students in the elementary schools. The Leveled Literacy Intervention program provides students with reading assistant system, and the training of classroom teachers and reading specialists. Higgins, Fitzgerald, and Howard (2015) found that providing “early interventions for struggling readers is critical for their future academic success” (p. 260). These authors continued by explaining that “these interventions should contain structured activities where students are supported through scaffolding, modeling and guiding until they gain competence and

A doctor once said ‘the more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go’. That doctor was, of course, Dr Suess in his book 1978 book, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!. Reading is the orchestration of many skills. It is much more than simply decoding words. The National Reading Panel Report (A Closer Look, 2004, p. 1) summarised a child’s reading process and teachers’ effective reading instruction into five essential components. These five critical elements are phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Each element is individually important; however, each cannot occur independently of one an other. The most effective way to teach these elements is through a balanced

Fluency is the ability to read with automatic word recognition, expression and meaning. For this assessment the teacher scored the student on word recognition accuracy, fluency- automaticity meaning how many words the student read a minute. Word recognition accuracy is scored by taking the words the student read correctly and dividing it by the total number of words the student read orally. Fluency automaticity was taking by counting the number of total words the student read. The student was also scored on a multidimensional fluency scale has several different subcomponents such as expression, and volume, phrasing and intonation, smoothness, and pace. All of these subcomponents add up to give the student a total score. For this assessment

Fluency is an important key idea in reading.. Fluency means that students can read with at least 95% accuracy in identifying words and sounds. Fluency is important in reading because it will be used as a base in having students identify new words when reading. Fluency is not only important in reading, but in writing as well. When working with my tutee I have noticed that while she can read the text well, when it comes down to writing key words or vocabulary from the text she has trouble. She can correctly identify the sounds the word makes, but not spell them correctly. Fluency is important to master for new students, because then when they are reading new texts they can identify similar words and key phonemes.

Many students around the United States have reading difficulties, which can be due to a variety of reason such as: low socioeconomic status, family history of learning disabilities, a neurological disorder, limited exposure, etc. Reading difficulties can lead to further problems with education and learning, therefore the struggles should be addressed and intervention techniques should be implemented promptly. The interventions need to be individualized for the student based on their needs in order to improve the student’s reading to the best of their abilities.

Many students are passed on through the education system without having proper reading skills. These skills consist of fluency, comprehension, and phonemic awareness. Reading skills are foundational building blocks for elementary aged students. Students who lack proper reading skills, such as fluency or the rate in which they read, will ultimately lack comprehension of what they are reading due to the amount of time in which it takes the students to read. This leads to the question, how does fifth grade students lack of fluency affect his or her reading comprehension? Unfortunately, because reading skills taught in kindergarten and first grade focus mainly on phonemic

When data from students who had average accuracy and fluency scores, but lower comprehension scores were compared to data from those with similar accuracy and fluency but average comprehension, the consistent differences were found to be lower oral language and vocabulary skills in the poor comprehenders upon entry into formal schooling. (Nation, Cocksey, Taylor & Bishop) Thousands of dollars each year are spent on intervention, trying to improve the reading of children that show delays. When one reads, the clear goal is comprehension of what is read. Without communication of ideas between the author and reader, decoding texts is pointless. Most intervention programs are focused on phonics and word decoding. Oral language interventions concurrent with vocabulary and comprehension tasks at age eight have been shown to lead to significant improvements in reading comprehension. (Nation, et al., 2010). Reading comprehension is not merely a product of being able to decode words and sentences. How we teach children to process and integrate the ideas found in text can have a large impact on their ability to function in a world of ever expanding knowledge and information.