Chapter 4: Fluency

There is a big connection between fluency and comprehension. If a student has trouble with fluency then they are going to struggle with comprehension. Students who are concentrating on what words they are reading are not comprehending the text. I always tell my students that reading is more than just words on a page. They need to be able to read and understand the words. When this connection happens, students find the love of reading. This chapter had some great ways to teach fluency in the classroom. I have personally used quite a few of them. Many of my fluency lessons are done in small groups since I have such a variety of reading levels.  With some of my groups, I am working on the basic fluency. We are working on reading smoothly and stopping at puncuation. In my other groups, we are working on expression. We do this by using a variety of text and even some reader's theaters. My students love performing in front of the class! Our district also monitors students reading through a program called Dibels. Students are asked to read as much as they can in a minute and do a retell. I have mixed feelings about this test. Some of my struggling readers who are in RTI work on improving in Dibels. Therefore, when they come to small group they are so worried about how much they read so they are reading really fast and not comprehending. We also use a program called Reading Plus to help students with their fluency. This is similar to the teacher putting a laser beam on a word to help students track themselves while they are reading. Reading Plus highlights words and moves while the student reads. As a teacher, I am able to determine how fast or slow the bar moves. It is our job to teach our students how to be successful readers. There are many lessons we can do in the classroom to help our students become fluent readers, which will help their comprehension. One activity I love to do in my class is the book pass. Each child has a book on their desk. This can be books about a certain topic or maybe to introduce some books that are in your library. Students then have a minute to preview the book. Throughout the year, I teach my students how to preview a book. They take these skills to examine the books on their desk. I love how interested my students become in the books. Many times they want more time to check out the book. Steven Layne's book Igniting a Passion for Reading  is a great book to teach you how to teach a student to preview a book. This is just an awesome book in general! Our district had the privilege to listen to him speak for our district. As an elementary teacher, I spend a lot of my reading instruction on fluency. I feel this is something that can't be passed up. If a student doesn't have a firm hold on fluency, they will never read! It will always just be a difficult task teachers make them do.