Why Reading Fluency Should be Hot!

[Notes from Timothy Rasinski's Keynote at Teachers College]

Must have: The Fluent Reader by Timothy Rasinski

Why should fluency be hot?
-Because it is related to comprehension!
-It's needed if you want joyous readers


Timothy Rasinski, Ph.D.
Kent State University
trasinsk@kent.edu

Fluency exercise he starts every day with: Songs/Poems!

Let's Start with a Song (and a metaphor)!

I'll Take Manhattan!

This works very well with ELLs!

Fluency has grown to be associated only with speed reading, only oral reading, and only primary grades.
DIBELS and AIMS Web: That's not fluency!

Why Reading Fluency Should be Hot!

We should commit to 10-15 minutes of fluency per day.

A Model of Reading Instruction
1. Word Study

Fun Activity: Daily Word Ladders

Write on board:

   work

pork

park

par

car

scar

scam

slam

clam

clamor

   labor

He has a bunch of books for this on Amazon

labor

   laboratory

   collaborate

   elaborate

The Latin-Greek Connection: Building Vocabulary Through Morphological Study

2. Fluency

Automaticity in Word Recognition (word study)

Prosody (expressiveness in reading)

Think about ways you say the word "dude" 

      Greeting "Dude"

      Question "Dude?"

      Exclamation "Dude!"

      Sad "Dude"

     *The way you say it changes the meaning!

3. Comprehension

We are doing a disservice to ourselves and our children by doing this timed reading business.

When working only on improving reading rate, comprehension actually starts to decline.

NAEP Oral Reading Study (4th Grade Students)

Multidimensional Fluency Scale Rating:	Silent Reading Comprehension Score:
Fluent Readers	249  (6th grade level)
Moderately Fluent	229
Somewhat Disfluent	207
Disfluent "Robot" Readers	179 (2nd grade level)

Reading speedily in a way that leads to comprehension, not reading fast for the sake of reading fast.

Building Blocks of Fluency

• Model Fluent Reading
• Assisted Reading
• Paired reading
• Choral reading/singing
• Reading with recording
• Captioned television (Every TV program in Finland is captioned. You can't turn it off)
• Practice
• 1. Wide Reading
• Reading one chapter after another, one book after another
• 2. Deep (Repeated) Reading
• Research study
• Read passage A 4 times: Each time students scored higher
• Read passage B 4 times: The first reading of B was higher than the first reading of A, even though B was a higher level than A!
• Happened again with passage C

Fluency program interprets this as, "Read this passage 5 times until you can read 120 words per minute, then we'll move on to another passage." Reading fast for the purpose of reading fast is not a good reason!

What would motivate a reader to read something more than repeatedly? Performance!

Text that are Meant to be Performed:

• Poetry
• Readers Theater Scripts
• Song Lyrics
• Dialogues
• Monologues
• Speeches

Synergistic Fluency Instruction

(Putting it all together--Fluency Development Lesson)

The purpose of the FDL is to get students to the point where they can read a new text well (fluently and with understanding) every day.

• Teacher model reads poem
• Students and Teacher chorally read
• Students practice poem with partner (Kid A to Kid B, Kid B to Kid A, share feedback)
• Kid A share to Kid B
• Kid B share to Kid A
• Partners help each other when needed
• Afterwards, partners give feedback: What parts did your partner do well?
• Students perform poem
• OK, who wants to share the poem today?
• Examine and play with words from poem
• More practice of poem at home
• REPEAT DAILY!!!!!!