Reading Note On Reading Comprehension

One of the benchmarks of a good reader is fluency. LaBerg and Samuels, 1976 define fluency as the process of automatically, accurately and rapidly recognizing words. It is my desire as a teacher to produce excellent readers. The sad reality for me is that, not all students can achieve this. As a teacher I see my task as one in which I must equip my pupils with the

Reading: Locates, understands, and interprets written information in prose and documents--including manuals, graphs, and schedules--to perform tasks; learns from text by determining the main idea or essential message; identifies relevant details, facts and specifications; infers or locates the meaning of unknown or technical vocabulary; and judges the accuracy, appropriateness, style, and plausibility of reports, proposals, or theories of other writers.( 134 USDOL)

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.

Bell claims researchers have attempted to explain what happens when reading to explain the concept of speed-reading. Such concepts include: 1) Chunking, dividing information into tiny pieces to understand information faster, 2) Pacers, using an object as a visual aid in reading to improve focus, and 3) Purposeful Reading, having a purpose in mind and asking questions to determine if speed-reading is necessary in certain circumstances.

Although the QRI-4 provided an abundance of beneficial data to determine Addison’s strengths and weakness as a reader, there were areas of reading that were not made available through the assessment such as phonemic awareness and vocabulary. However, the QRI-4 was useful in identifying Addison’s independent, instructional, and frustration level, which was necessary to plan her instructional goals and recommendations. Others pros of the QRI- 4 provided the opportunity to hear Addison read and demonstrate her strengths and weaknesses in reading short passages within in a relatively short period of time. Due to the word identification assessment the QRI-4 provided an accurate starting point, to ensure that Addison could begin the assessment at an adequate level.

As mentioned before, The National Reading Panel in 2000 and the No Child Left Behind Act signed in 2001 defined there five components as the most important to teach in reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency. Phonemic awareness is defined as the knowledge that spoken words can be broken apart into smaller segments of sound known as phonemes. Phonics is defined as the knowledge that letters of the alphabet represent phonemes, and that these sounds are blended together to form written words. The component three, fluency, which is the ability to recognize words easily, read with greater speed, accuracy, and expression, and to better understand what is read. The fourth component, vocabulary, is defined as teaching new words, either as they appear in the text, or by introducing new words separately. The fifth component is comprehension, comprehension is defined as understanding what

To become a strong reader, the students must develop skills in all six components of the reading - phonological awareness, phonics, oral language, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Now, let see how interdependent they are. First, fluency is considered to be bridge recognition and comprehension. Fluency readers have the ability to read at a suitable rate of speed for their grade level. This ability will them to focus on students can focus on the meaning of the words rather than on decoding the words. With the background knowledge, the students have the ability to manipulate sound of the language. This called phonological awareness skills which help the student to make a connection between sounds and the words. Also, learning to make a

Decoding words is the ability to take the visual representation and associate the appropriate phoneme to blend the phonemes to make meaning words. This is a key factor in reading performance. Students struggle with any phonological tasks if he or she does not have the ability to decode words (Swank, 10). If a student does not know how to decode, then he or she must rely on sight vocabulary or another method.

Over a long period of time, the ability of a learner to read educational materials fluently has been taken as the most thorough learning method through which the learner can acquire literacy. Kuhn, Schwanenflugel and Meisinger (2010) argue that reading fluency should not only focus on automatic word recognition as a way to assess the ability of a learner (p. 231). The authors argue that there should be other methods to assess reading fluency through prosody, which can influence the rhythm

To enhance the strategy the article: Repeated Reading as a Method to Improve Reading Fluency for Struggling Adolescent Readers, suggests to incorporate fluency practices as a part of holistic approach of the reading development. It also suggests choosing material the student is interested in, ensure that the teacher is modeling fluency within their readings, and providing them opportunities with both independent

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

Their reading is confident and fluent and they use expression and punctuation. They have a good understanding and are able to use a variety of comprehension strategies. These readers read a wide range of text types. They continue to improve their reading skills as they come across more difficult reading materials. Books they read have a majority of text, a variety of topics and challenging vocabulary. They have more complex sentences with interesting descriptions and include different writing styles. Fluent Readers able to recognize and read the words and work out new and challenging words. They can understand what is being read and are able to make predictions and interpretations. They can also make connections between different books. They are able to use the vocabulary they gain in their own

As many teachers search for new strategies and interventions to address the lack of fluency within their reading programs, Repeated Reading (RR) appears to be a topic of curiosity. RR is an evidenced based strategy designed to increase reading fluency and comprehension through the development of automatic word processing and contextualized linguistic effect (Winter, 2007). Similar to the text features on a cell phone, automatic word processing is the ability to detect and comprehend a word effortlessly as the viewer glares to the next set of letters. This skill is key in increasing fluency as the reader spends little time decoding the words before them.

Reading is believed to be an easy task, something we all learning and develop through the years as we grow, however, is it really that simple? To reading and understanding are both essential when a student begins to read. It is a complex action that requires a multitude of different actions/components, all working at the same time, to become a successful reader. The components that are pertinent to reading are: comprehension, oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency and vocabulary. Without these components, reading may very well be irrelevant because it does not make sense to read and not understand what is being transmitted/relayed. According to the National Reading Panel (NRP), “a combination of techniques is effective for