A. Imagine that your principal has asked you to advise her in improving literacy instruction in the target area (phonics, comprehension, fluency). Identify 3-5 best practices and describe how the research in the article supports this practice. Identify at least one caveat/common mistake of teachers in the target area and describe what research says about that area.
We can improve our literacy instruction of fluency in three ways. First, we need to focus more overall time on assisted reading, including reading while listening, in both remediation and regular classroom practice. Research on choral reading, (Heckelman, 1969,) where both a teacher and student are reading a text, (the student silently and the teacher aloud,) has shown a mean gain of 1.9 years within the timeframe of just a summer remedial program. This works best in a tutorial or one-on-one approach. In addition, partner reading has been shown to improve fluency. (Eldredge 1988 and Quinn 1990.) This technique is where a teacher chooses student pairs each week. One of the readers is fluent and is the lead reader, while the other is a struggling reader. The lead reader provides supportive feedback and the students practice until both are fluent. This was shown to outperform traditional basal group results.
Finally, we need to train our reading teachers to focus more of their efforts on prosody, or oral expression. Reading researchers Chomsky in 1978, and T. V. Rasinsky in 1990b, have shown that characteristics of prosody are present when a student is a fluent reader. The teacher can both model good oral expressiveness, (including stress, pitch, and juncture,) and directly teach it. Prosody is a part of oral language that children are already enjoying as they construct meaning. Read and Shreiber (1982) are researchers who showed that children need prosody to understand speech more than adults do.
Please note an important caveat to these strategies and fluency instruction in general. It is critical that the teacher has determined that the struggling reader is at least in the transitional stage of Chall’s model. That is, the student has basic reading skills, can decode, and is between a late pre-primer and late second-grade independent reading level. It is a common mistake of teachers to apply fluency strategies according to grade level instead of according to independent reading levels.
B. How did the VOL, (Voices of Literacy,) podcast that you listened to complement your knowledge of the topic?
My understanding of the research on reading fluency was enhanced by listening to Dr. Betsy Baker interview Dr. Mathew Quirk, an Assistant Professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He did a study called, “Motivation and Reading Fluency Among Second Graders,” and found that the more skilled readers his students became, then the more motivated they became to read. His question was what was the relationship of the student’s motivation to read to reading skills, and which came first. He found there was a reciprocal or ongoing relationship between the two, and that as his students became more excited about their success, they sought more reading practice. So, this was bidirectional and both were necessary for progress. He suggested the results were important for principals and policy makers because the teachers he met were already aware of this. He said the current culture of high-stakes testing was not motivating young readers, so it was important that principals and policy makers know that motivation has a key role to play in acquiring more reading skills. I was intrigued and connected this to my recent readings regarding the importance of student enjoyment of connected texts to developing prosody and fluency. It makes sense that students will experience an increase in their motivation to read as they learn to comprehend text better through a focus on prosody. So, every exciting “aha” moment that a teacher can create for a student will result in more self-motivated reading practice and higher achievement.
C. What overarching themes/findings seemed to characterize best practices across fluency, phonics, and comprehension?
I see a continuous thread in the best practices of fluency, phonics, and comprehension of the importance of knowing one’s students thoroughly. In each of these areas, it is critical to know what motivates the individual student, what their reading stage is, (regardless of grade,) and what their independent reading level is. For example, implementing best practices while teaching phonics explicitly for short, (approximately fifteen minutes,) of fun, connected daily lessons in first grade, is only possible when the teacher knows each student’s level of mastery of the alphabetic principle. To enhance comprehension, regardless of the core reading program chosen, a teacher needs the latitude to alter scope and sequence according to their particular students’ needs and interests. Finally, before using fluency strategies, a teacher must be certain that their student has basic reading skills mastered. So, knowledge of one’s students is a key theme.
Another overarching theme across fluency, phonics, and comprehension is they each work best in a deliberate, structured program that is explicit to all, especially the students. So teachers need to be explicit about what they are doing. A teacher could say, “We are learning about the letter d and connecting it to our dinosaur research.” This will build motivation, improve comprehension, and set the stage for fluency. Within that structure, the teacher has room to elaborate and give more practice than a core program calls for, when needed. The structure remains regardless. Students comprehend texts better with a structure that includes modeling, examples, and guided practice. So, it’s important that teachers increase anticipation by letting students know the outline of their upcoming, exciting units of study. Positive, informative feedback will motivate students to press on through phonics lessons that are organized and connected well to authentic literature and units of study. If an individual student needs remediation in any of the areas of phonics, fluency, or comprehension, they still maintain a sense of overall structure to their learning progress.