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Tips:  Fluency

#1 Being Read to by Teachers

1. ★  Partner Reading--is  a great way to encourage fluency and confidence. After guided reading, pair off the students and have them read to each other - their audience - instead of  the oral rereading of the text as a group.   They can read with a partner in the reading center or be placed around the room.
   

2. ★ Plumber’s Elbow Pipes are great for developing fluency. The student reads into one end and places the other end to his/her ear.
   

The old fashion Round Robin Reading-  everyone in the class/group taking a turn to read aloud, is just that: for the birds and can accomplish no good, only harm. Besides discipline problems that surface,  there is no teaching involved; it serves no purpose.

1. ★ Choral Reading of poetry is another sure way of developing fluency. Repeating poetry can be easily varied by alternating stanzas or lines with the group as a whole or individuals taking a line. Varying choral reading makes the repetition interesting and fun. Repeating the readings supports fluency as well as confidence especially for the At Risk student. With choral reading, children can enjoy chanting, shouting, reading fast, reading slowly, reading with exaggerated expression and creating unusual effects with many voices. Video tape their performance and replay it for them as their reward for a good job.
   

2. ★Reading cumulative stories is good to develop fluency because their rhythm and rhyme and simple plot such as  An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball , The Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, The Gingerbread Man, The House that Jack Built, The Great Big Enormous Turnip, The Cake That Mack Ate, Chicken Licken, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, for more advanced readers- Shoes for Grandpa. Children can be paired, given a character for practice reading,  and can make a puppet of their character. After the children know their lines the whole group can come together and perform. Each pair can hold up their puppet and chorally reads their part.
   

3. ★. Listen to Read Alongs Above all, have the students listen to many professionals as they follow along with the text. Research has shown how learning disabled, disadvantaged and culturally disadvantaged are helped significantly with the read-along recorded stories. Public libraries are well stocked with read-along CD sets. They can also be purchased at book stores. An average gain of eight months in reading after three months was noted by Carbo in her study. “Teaching Reading with Talking Books.” The Reading Teacher Dec. 1978)
   

With the student who has no self-confidence, you may even have the student listen to a read-along with earphones while the student is recorded reading along.  That entails two recorders- one to play and the other to record plus earphones. It certainly boosts a students morale and confidence when he/she listens to himself/herself.

Using Music to Improve Reading Fluency

1. •Students become more fluent readers as they read and sing along with the lyrics for a variety of songs.
   

2. •Besides giving students time for repeated reading, working with lyrics has other benefits.
   

Students find rhyming words and word structure by pulling out this already familiar text. Vocabulary development helps comprehension in other types of reading. Song lyrics are a natural springboard to studying themes.”

Print the songs onto charts and place them around the room to teach weekly word chunks and to read when they are “reading the room.”

1. •Readers Theater/Dramatizing provide a need for repetitive readings
   

2. ★Podcasting and Video Taping provide enthusiasm to practice oral reading and spark an desire to read fluently.
   

3. ★SSR Sustain Silent Reading is an important time for students to practice their reading and in turn become fluent readers.  The guided reading session needs to be complemented with independent reading to encourage proficiency. Teachers can motive meaningful SSR sessions   by providing time at the end of the sessions for students to discuss their readings with a partner.  Teachers can conference during this time to help motivate, find the interesting reading material, and reinforce strategies.
   

4. ★Of course the best way of developing fluency is to read, read, read and reread books.  The Commission on Reading in Becoming a Nation or Readers states that independent reading is a major source of reading fluency.                                   
   

I maintain that at the earliest stage, reading can be fluent if  the children are taught to use semantic and syntactic clues along with phonics. Initially when children are reading a text, they should not be asked to sound out an entire word - just get their mouth ready for the first sound.  Pictures, repetition, and predictability support fluency for emergent readers. Emergent readers should be given enough support so they will not make a mistake.

Familiarity with the topic - background- knowledge-and the predictability of the text, greatly supports fluency.

1. ★Fluency - speed can not be a primary objective in reading.  Beware of children with severe learning disabilities. Very bright, disabled students may not be able to synchronize the visual with the verbal. Some Leaning Disabled readers comprehend a 100%; make great predictions, and are very insightful making great deductions and analogies but they can not read aloud to save themselves! Some students, like some adults, are constantly self correcting, stuttering,  and repeating, but they can read silently with great comprehension. 
   

2. ★Oral reading usually gives the teacher an indication of a student’s readability level but not if the student has a problem with synchronizing the eye and voice. That type of child should not be asked to read aloud unless it is a very short passage; has been practiced; and there is plenty of support such as a poem with rhythm, rime, and repetition. All students want to read aloud but stuttering, repetitions, and self-corrections  will subject that type of disabled student to ridicule and provide a poor model for others. It will also reinforce a poor self image in the disabled student.
   

Don’t insist on word perfect oral reading. If a student substitutes a meaningful word, don’t stop to correct him. Make corrections at the end of the reading and only if miscues change the meaning. Mistakes are a part of life.

1. ★Fluency is usually an indication of comprehension but not necessarily. Occasionally a teacher can encounter a student who reads with great fluency but  comprehends zilch. Oral reading is so easy for some that they get distracted while reading aloud.  Memorizing a text with many repeated readings until fluency has been reached is not reading. It can build morale and a better self-image.  Too much emphasis on phonics can defeat the goal of reading: comprehension.
   

2. ★Humor - reading humorous stories plants the desire to  entertain others. The students will gladly rehearse  the jokes, articles, or stories.
   

3. ★Some experts advocate 15- 30 min. of each day reading books of his/her own choice maintaining it as an essential component of reading instruction-SSR reading. Conversations during this time is a way of extending students’ thinking  and monitoring student involvement. a  time to scaffold silent reading.
   

4. ★Vygotsky (1978) maintained that children speak out loud as they think. For them, talk is essential to thought and action until they eventually develop “inner speech”. It is common for first graders to subvocalize; pair reading replaces subvocalizing.
   

5. ★Repeated reading is a technique for increasing fluency.`

Dramatizing /Readers Theater   Encourages Fluency

Tips: Each narrative lends itself to some type of dramatic presentation.  If there is a lot of dialogue,  the reading group can be sub divided  so that there is a part for every child including story teller/ narrator. The sub groups simultaneously read the section in their own sub group. If the children sit on the rug in the reading center and close their reading circle, voices will be contained. 

For variation the children can sit on chairs in the reading area. If there are four characters, you can keep assigning character 1,2,3,4, and the story teller /narrator until the children all have a part. Pre-assign the section they will read to giving the section a number. The next set of children will continue where the previous set left off.  With this option we have an audience.

Occasionally the children can be asked to act out their  parts as they ad lib what they remember. Props aren’t needed but sometimes if they are handy, they will liven up the presentation.  Sometimes the students  spontaneously take something in the room as a prop. As the dramatization takes place, the  “audience,” on their own, may decide to follow in their text and sometimes give prompts. A few suggestions can be given to start them off but their ideas are very creative .

Occasionally, if the story lends itself to a full dramatization. Masks can be made; other times just letter the characters’ names  on 2 cards and  hang the cards over the students’ shoulders with string, yarn or just pin/tape the titled card to the actors.  Occasionally the story can be retyped  as a play and run off for the students to take home and practice reading their parts. (Some plays are in a format that can be run off in lieu of typing the entire play.)

Knowing that there will be some type of dramatic activity following a story, children become very attentive to sequence and details especially characterization.

Dramatizing is fun and makes stories come alive;                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 it’s a great way for children to become aware of the story structure;  a good comprehension check; encourages higher order thinking skills; viz. visualizing and analyzing; it is a means of interacting and learning from each other, plus the movement is just what  the “doctor” prescribes. Besides  releasing energy, children need to move in order to learn. As was  stated above: exercise is "Miracle-Gro for the Brain"

Creative drama is a very useful  with ESL students.

I often recorded performances with my camcorder. That puts the students at their best behavior. I  sometimes took the tape, burned it into a CD/DVD, and send it home. Mac’s  Keynote program is great tool to incorporate a variety of activities, oral and written. You can include written stories, choral reading of poetry, reading silently, dramatizations - anything that reflects their work in the language arts area, can be included in the Keynote document. Burning the culminating activity into a CD/DVD and sending it  home is a great way to show parents/caregivers an inside view of learning in progress.

At the end of guided reading and discussion, regardless of genre,  students can be paired off to read to each other. They take turns reading, usually a page at a time. With their “whispering” voices just loud enough for their partner to hear, it is easy to notice if anyone is having a problem.

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