Fluency
The article Creating Fluent Readers emphasized three main dimensions that build a bridge to comprehension: accuracy, automaticity, and prosodic reading. Assisted readings and repeated readings can greatly improve students reading fluency. By having students follow along while a fluent reader reads a text aloud and then have them reread it is a good way to practice fluency. I like the idea in Chapter 4 of the textbook about echo reading. I think that could be a fun activity to have children try and mimic your voice, especially if different voices and characters are used in the dialogue. I also agree that it is SO important that teachers consistently model good fluency reading. Also a really good idea to practice fluency is to have students perform! By reading poetry, speeches, jokes, riddles, or dialogues students are more likely to read with more expression. The article mentioned how some school encourage timed reading which encourages students to put more emphasis on speed rather than meaning. This does not help them gain a deeper meaning of the text but just creates fast readers that will not comprehend what they are reading.
The picture above is an example of a cue teachers could make and put on the wall in the reading center to remind students about fluency. Another good idea that I remember my first grade teacher making us do when we were learning about fluency was to make us tap our index finger and thumb together (like a quick pinching motion) at the end of every sentence to remind ourselves to take a quick pause. I think they really helped some of the students that were struggling with reading fluency.
"Tap, Tap, Tap!"
I really like your idea about pinching! I know a lot of the time I just try to read as fast as I can to hurry through the material and my sentences end up running together. I think this would be a good activity to have my students do to make them slow down a little and take time between each sentence. For younger students you could even try to make it something cute rather than just touching your index finger to your thumb, like telling them to pinch the periods.
ReplyDeleteI also loved the tap method!! I can remember so many peers in my classroom (I included!) that would just run through a sentence on to the next one without stopping or comprehending any punctuation. I also remember reading as a group in the class and being able to read and take those pauses in my head, while the person reading out loud did not. It always bothered me because I would pause in my head and when they didn't I would lose my place or not understand what I'm reading! I think that's a great way to get the whole class involved and really focusing on that!
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