And Now A Thought About Fluency

Teachers,

Here is your weekly dose of “5-Point Friday. 

And Now A Thought About Fluency —

I have been at a lot of trainings this week. There was a part of the training that was an ah-ha moment for me. It reminded me about the literacy training I did a couple years ago. In the training I read about Fluency and how important it is leading up to comprehension. Fluency is not only how fast a text is read out loud, but it also includes accuracy and prosody. Students should read as fast as they talk. There is a WPM guide that tells us how fast that should be according to grade level, but a generally it should be as fast as a student talks. Faster than that, they are just reading as fast as they can and comprehension suffers. Accuracy brings in words, vocabulary and context and provides meaning to words students recognize as well as context to the text. If words are missed or misread, the meaning of the story could get lost. Prosody is the way stories are read. The voice fluctuation, the raising and lowering of the voice, sounding like the voices that are speaking the words on the page, and reading not only the words, but the punctuation. Storytelling. Put all these things together and we get fluency. Without each of these things, comprehension goes down. Now to the ah-ha moment. As we learned about all this, we thought about how we read books with students and listen to them stumble over words, help correct them if they say a words or sentence wrong, and in the end have them tell us what they read. If the student is reading a book they are not fluent in and are struggling reading words and do not know the vocabulary, should we expect them to understand what they read each time? They need to work on comprehension, but fluency is a big part of being able to understand the meaning of a text. So what do we do? If they do not comprehend what has been read, is the fluency getting in the way? Would choral reading help them understand better as they listen and read? Just a thought. If a student does not comprehend what is going on in a story, it might be because of their fluency. I know you are all working on amazing things with your students. This was just an moment of clarity for me. You just happen to be on the reading end of my thoughts. Thank you for bearing with me.

Quote I’m pondering —

“In order to change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one’s mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.”
— Anaïs Nin

What’s Happening —

This Coming Week	In Two Weeks
Mon. Jan 20 - MLK, Jr. Day No School Wed. Jan 22 - Acadience Testing at Santa Clara (aides gone morning) Thu. Jan 23 - Acadience Testing at Santa Clara (aides gone morning)	Mon. Jan 28 - 5th grade to Lava Ridge Wed. Jan 29 - English teacher DLI Training grades 4-5 Wed. Jan 29 - English teacher DLI Training grades 1-3
Coming up: Cultural Night beginning of February. More information to come.

Favorite Article This Week —

Quality and Effort

I love Seth Godin. There are some thoughts that have made me think about my systems.

A Big Thank You —

Thank you k-3 grade teachers for your flexibility with the Acadience testing. It is always a nightmare trying to gauge how long the testing will take for each grade level. I understand the inconvenience it places on you when these tests come up. I really appreciate third grade for moving your test to the next week. It is nice to get through these needed things and everyone just works through it. Thank you for your help and understanding. Thank you for all that you do. Thank you.

I appreciate all of you and your hard work.