Chapter 10: All teachers are reading teachers, Controlling the Game (Keep Durations Unpredictable, Keep Identity of Next Reader Unpredictable, Keep Durations Short, Reduce Transaction Costs, Use Bridging to Maintain Continuity. Oral Cloze, Placeholder).
Chapter 11: The Fundamentals: Teaching Decoding (Punch the Error, Mark the Spot, Name the Sound, Chunk It, Speed the Exceptions, Cueing Systems), Vocabulary Development (Multiple Takes, Compare, Combine, Contrast, Upgrade, Stress the Syntax, Back to Roots, Picture This) and Fluency (Show Some Spunk, Ask for Some Drama, Check the Mechanics, Lather-Rinse-Repeat).
A few things we do in 5-6th grade for fluency: we read and then re-read, noting how fluency increases because we are familiar with the text. We do some choral reading, listen to reading and then they re-read passage aloud. We write responses to what we have read to make sure we are not compromising comprehension to gain fluency. We do book/passage walk-throughs to see if we have a sense about our subject/topic and what we will be reading.
ReplyDeleteThat's great! I love that you talk about the relationship between fluency and comprehension and that you reread passages regularly.
DeleteI am happy to hear that you read a passage several times!! I know that I get frustrated with my own children's educations in the upper grades because they only read something once and are expected to retain the information! I also like the fact that you talk about comprehension with fluency. Sometimes I think we forget that a student doesn't necessarily comprehend what they are reading just because they can read fluently!!!
DeleteI have always believed reading is the crux of literacy! I loved the video that Cinde sent out and Chapter 10 is especially a good reminder of successful strategies that good reading teachers use! My mentor for my masters degree taught me those same strategies over 14 years ago! She has a doctorate in reading and helped to establish the Reading Labs that were established in Fort Collins and Longmont! It is encouraging to find those same strategies reinforced in this book. While I try to incorporate many, I forget some! It's hard to do everything all the time! Pacing is something I worked hard to keep the momentum in my ELA classes! I still believe that even though the DIBELS pushes wpm, that is not real fluency! Fluency is not about reading fast, its about reading well and being able to make meaning from print! I have had students in the past who could read perfectly and were not able to comprehend anything they read. I struggle with always expecting so many words at a grade level. I have a student who was not able to sound out or read any words in Kinder and 1st, who now can read well because we are not focusing on speed! I believe this student is fluent! They are able to retell almost everything they have read! I think we overuse testing programs and it should be about reading "With expression" while being able to comprehend what they read! I wish our testing would focus more on a balance between reading well and comprehension without criteria of reading so many words per minute. I don't think that is reading well! I do know what the research is, but it should be about the individual rather than the norm!
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you on that Lynette! I feel that real fluency should not have a number to it. Fluency should be where a student can read it well, and understand what they are reading from the text. I think that sometimes we push the numbers too much and then the kids think that if they can just read it fast they will be considered great readers. Fluency also should include expression, and I think that sometimes we need to have them slow down and work on teaching them expression with oral reading. Another thing that I have found with some of my kiddos is that they really don't take the time to go back and look in the text for the answer if they don't know it. So, during this month gearing up for PAWS I have retaught some reading and have had them do exactly that. Again, they just read through things too fast, that they can't comprehend it, and then when you show them the answer is in the reading, sometimes they act really surprised!
ReplyDeleteI have similar opinions about the fluency expectations in DIBELS. I understand it's purpose and it is a good faith effort, but it doesn't measure true fluency. It is so very important to use all of our data when looking at a student. If DIBELS says they are behind, double check their comprehension and listen to them read. If they are reading with inflection/expresssion and can answer pertinent comprehension questions, then I consider them a fluent reader. That is when you can say that their DIBELS score is not necessarily a true reflection of the student's reading ability when looked at as a whole.
DeleteThe other side of that though is that if they score low on DIBELS and they are not comprehending well, it is another piece of the puzzle of where they could be struggling and can give some really detailed information as to where they are struggling especially if you review the specific words they missed in mClass and delve deeper than the overall score. The point I am trying to make is that it can be a helpful tool, but it should never be the only tool used to describe a student's reading abilities.
I agree- however, I am thankful for DIBELS: it is a good 'jumping off point' for us to start digging deeper, and overall has worked well in my classroom to raise red flags to look for other issues mentioned above. Plus, it is quick, easy and kids do not mind it too much!
DeleteI would prefer a different test. I think DIBELS is a good tool in some aspects for the lower grades, but I would like to see the upper grades use the QRI 2 which tests their level of explicit and implicit comprehension of a passage. I think we need to focus on reading skills with regards to comprehension and connection to text in the upper grades and do not feel DIBELS is a good measure of this for grades 3-6.
DeleteLynette, I fully agree with your post. Real fluency is not how fast a student reads, but about reading well and comprehension. I have had students who score low on the DIBELS score, yet can comprehend what they just read. I have also had students who are off the charts as far as words per minute, but could not tell me what they just read. There has to be a "happy medium" Students need to learn to read at the speed they are comfortable at for understanding with appropriate inflections and expressions.
DeleteI am glad to hear that these are the tried and true strategies that have been working for years. I had some extra time after PAWS testing and sat down with a student and read. He is struggling, but I tried these techniques and I think it was so much more effective than just plowing through. I wasn't aware of the pressure on elementary teachers to increase student reading speed. I hope if that really gets in the way of teaching students the literacy skills they need that you will speak up and that some sort of balance can be found. I so agree with you that literacy skills are the most important things we can teach.
ReplyDeleteIn math class, we spend a lot of time decoding. When given real-life word problems, it is important to know what the problem is asking. I ask students to read the problem once all the way through to get a feel for it. Then we go back and read it again, highlighting the pertinent information. We write down the known information and write down what we are looking for. I have students read objectives for the day and some of our problems. A few students have gotten really good at changing the tone of their voice and enunciating very clearly the important parts of the question. It is difficult to understand a math question if the student is not a fluent reader. We also work on the math vocabulary by relating words to other words that they already know. For example equiangular... we look at the prefix equi- and then notice angle as well. They can figure out that means equal angles. I have many more examples of how we do that in math class.
ReplyDeleteI too spend time with my math students looking at real-world problems and decoding what the problem is asking. I usually have a student read the problem, then we go back and underline or highlight the information needed to answer the question. I als ask them to restate the question in their own words.
DeleteThis is very similar to what I do in science. I go over the objectives, then the student read the passages on the ppt. They highlight the main idea and key words to help them answer the questions.
DeleteWord problems seem to be a road block for many students, which is why I agree with you that giving them the skills and strategies to break down the words into important parts is such a crucial element of math instruction. I used to ask my students to create a math key words dictionary in which I had them write the four major operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. When they worked on word problems, we would identify words that meant one of the four operations and write it in our dictionaries. Then as their dictionaries had more words, I would ask them to identify key words in the problem and look them up in the dictionary. I do want to point out that some of those key words would work for more than one operation which was important for students to recognize, but I had found students had many more successes with word problems when using their dictionaries.
DeleteI really enjoyed Cinde's video that she sent out. I loved that she created the yes/no list about whether or not they matter. At different times in my career I have gone from correcting every mistake to it's taking too long, just let them get through it, to they won't comprehend it if they don't read the correct words, so I will just give them the word as they read and that will help with comprehension, and back to they need to know how to decode as well as comprehend. Which brings me back to these strategies and having to remind myself not to give them the word but to have them decode it. I appreciated the reminder and am sure I will be coming back to these strategies frequently to help myself improve.
ReplyDeleteReading is a foundational skill for life. No matter what a child becomes after his/her school years reading will be relevant. I enjoy teaching reading and encouraging fluency in my students. I have found that it works best to begin instruction where they are and challenge them to move forward. If a student struggles with phonics, we work on word families and chunking; syllables skills and blends. If a student chunks everything and sounds like he is stuttering...we talk about reading like we speak and keeping our reading smooth. I love having students share a story with me about an event in their life that was fun and exciting. When they tell their story...I relate it to how they should read. Reading well is an art and takes practice, skill, practice and skill. I struggled as a reading in different ways when I was younger and love the skill sets I have learned as a teacher to help me become a better reader as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing- I agree with your post. Reading is always relevant :) It is heartbreaking to see people out in our world that struggle so with it. Life is a lot harder for them in general.
DeleteI have enjoyed teaching the upper level Read to Write Class this year. It has been a good challenge for me to not just focus on the writing, but reading as well. It has been a lot of fun coming up with various genres for students to read that would be interesting not only to read but to spark more interest in sharing their thoughts and ideas in writing. It is probably one of my favorite classes! We are reading and learning a lot together about many topics. We mix up the responses, too. Sometimes cloze activities are involved, inference, restating questions regarding text and giving an answer, etc. Great reading skills are key- so it has been great coming up with reading at their levels that they can respond appropriately to.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was teaching in the classroom, we used terms like sound it out, do it again, then say it fast and snapped our fingers to say it fast! I always loved working in reading groups! I liked the video Cinde sent out! I agree Angelique, most teachers have been all over the spectrum from reading groups for high, medium, and low, to red birds, blue birds, and yellow birds, and then finally no reading groups. We were told not to correct their mistakes in a group, but who will and what an opportunity to reinforce the word for every child when one misses a word. I love teaching reading, but I think we have really gone from one extreme to another and would like to education make the move to creating best practices overall! The testing companies have made a fortune on scripted programs and we are NOT quality control! No one system fits EVERY child who struggles with reading! We need to be about finding the processes rather than the programs that help struggling students to become successful readers!! I don't feel like we are quite there yet!
ReplyDeleteMy students have responded well to the rehearsed reading strategy. I read to the student and the student reads back. I also play a lot of decoding games with my kiddos.
ReplyDeleteI think that decoding is important but also fluency and expression is too in reading. Sometimes I think that we need to maybe try different activities like Reader's Theater for oral reading, but do it more than once to improve on reading fluency and comprehension more often. I also feel that we need to teach more strategies of finding information in reading, and show them how to find this information. So many just don't think to go back and reread what they had just read, that's where comprehension comes in.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that teachers do not "know" or give themselves credit that they are teaching reading anytime they teach. Most every curricular area involves some type of reading at some level.
ReplyDeleteIt was also comforting to know that there are many strategies that we already use.
I have turned my focus this year in reading classes to teaching them strategies to use to help increase their reading fluency. I have found that many students wait for their learning coach or teacher to read the word for them, as we do tell them in DIBELS that if you do not know the word, I will read it for you- :) Each time before the read I show them a strategy poster and ask them to choose or tell me two strategies they will use if the come to a word they do not know. I feel strongly about teaching vocabulary across the curriculum and feel that the Step up to Writing program has useful resources to help teach vocabulary- my first graders love the quick sketch time & seem to retain it best when they are allowed draw as well.... I like to use this in Math and science especially. Students are often given time to read silently first and are aware that they can all be called upon to read out loud, we talk often about helping each other learn and rather than telling someone the word, we remind them of strategies to try. :)
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of showing them the strategies chart and having them choose strategies they will try before they start reading. That is an excellent idea!
DeleteLIKE :-)
DeleteMuch like we were talking about today in staff meeting about the Science portion of the PAWS test, reading is an essential skill across the curriculum!! If you can't read and comprehend, all subjects (and life in general) are much more difficult, even impossible!! Reading this chapter makes me remember that not one single intervention works for all students. I agree with Lynette...I feel like there have been so many "band-wagons" with reading instruction that I would LOVE to work on the processes students take to learn to enjoy reading rather than canned programs designed to teach every student in the same way.
ReplyDeleteAs I have had more time being a middle school teacher, instead of a high school teacher, one area I have noticed that students really struggle with is making the jump from "learning to read" to "reading to learn." They seem to struggle with content area reading a lot because it requires different reading skills. Content area reading has headings, unknown vocabulary, charts/graphs, etc. where literature has stories and the student can use his/her imagination more. I learned so much by team teaching with Lorena science PAWS prep. The students really do need to know context clue skills and managing information skills a lot more. They are expected to understand main idea and details and be able to differentiate between the two on their own. Many students do not seem ready or able to do this type of reading which sets them up for failure in high school. It is also interesting that reading is left to the Language Arts teacher, and I rarely have content area material like science and history with which to work. Just an observation.
ReplyDeleteI need to incorporate reading skills in my lessons and take the teachable moments in science to help students understand "reading to learn" and not assume they know how to do this.
DeleteI wish our curriculum allowed more for the cross curricular needs this topic brings up. I used to use the history and science textbooks for my reading instruction and used the science time for hands on experiences. The students were pushed toward increasing their "reading to learn" skills because they used them in a reading class with reading supports where the content was not necessarily tested at the same time and it paid off, unfortunately for us, there is a full year of Literature, History, and Science curriculum and we don't have the time necessarily to pull from the subjects for reading and still get the Literature expectations done.
Delete"Imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical school. This school values reading above all other endeavors - to an exaggerated degree." My wife teaches English and I think she would agree that it would probably best if, in college, EVERYONE had to take numerous classes on teaching to read. I feel like I know a few strategies, and some are listed in this book (much earlier in it), but then I get to Chapter 11 and I think this is where I'm falling completely flat. For me, the rest of the book was nice, but this is meat! On the other side of life, K12 says the lesson should take 60 minutes. The transaction cost of the fundamentals in Unit 11 is both high and necessary. I would LOVE to spend a bunch of time with students on a single hard piece of lit, and use something like multiple takes, but I just don't know that I have the time. I currently use "back to roots" (super easy in history) and "picture this", for visual learners, but I still feel woefully inadequate in this area, which I truly feel is the area in which students will win or lose the war of becoming life long learners. Maybe I should go back to college for a reading endorsement, right?
ReplyDeleteYou make an excellent point! History is an amazing subject area where a lot of the reading skills can be put to good use. One of the really useful strategies I learned especially for content came when I taught in Florida. They were using a "program" (not canned like we think of, but more a listing of teaching strategies.) It was called School Turnaround for low performing schools, but what I learned and used tremendously was the use of graphic organizers for helping students with reading information. If you do not currently use graphic organizers with your students, I highly encourage you to do so. There are many excellent examples out there.
DeleteKeeping Durations Unpredictable was interesting to me. I have several struggling readers in my classroom and when they are asked to read, you can tell the other students are not engaged and they lose track of the "narrative thread". I use cold calling a lot, but I tell the students what they will be reading and when. I need to make this more unpredictable and I need to keep the passages short to keep attention and better reading in my whole group classes and especially my Mark 12 class.
ReplyDeleteI also found the decoding section interesting. I teach the Mark 12 class for 3rd grade, and I do not correct decoding errors as often as I should and I don't "punch the error". These are great strategies for my struggling readers!