Ch. 6 Developing Fluent Readers and Writers

Reading Fluency: Ability to read quickly, without mistakes, with expression, and fluently. Students should recognize most words automatically. 

Automaticity: When reader can recognize words automatically. Automaticity is a component of fluency. Words that are unfamiliar to students should also be read quickly using decoding strategies.

Speed: Another component of fluency. Readers who are fluent can read at least 100 words per minute (WPM). This speed is usually met by 3rd grade. 

Prosody: Another component of fluency. When students can read sentences expressively and attend to punctuation.

High Frequency Words: Most common words that are seen while reading. These words account for half of the words people read and write. High frequency words are to decode because they can be sounded out. 

Word Identification Strategies: 4 Strategies

Phonic Analysis: When students apply knowledge about phoneme-grapheme correspondences and phonics to decode words.

Decoding by Analogy: Students associate words with words they already know. 

Syllabic Analysis: Used by more experienced readers. Reader divides longer words into syllables to identify them. Ex) TARGET -tar -get

Morphemic Analysis: Used to identify multisyllabic words. Locate root words by removing prefixes and suffixes. 

Language Experience Approach: A book is read by the class, then rewritten by the students. The teacher then revises the students writing with them on the board. Teacher then types up the final draft for the students and prints out copies for each student to illustrate and read.

Assessing Reading Fluency: Informally listening to students read aloud during guided reading lessons. Workshop, or other activities. Every so often teachers will collect data regarding each student’s accuracy, speed, and prosody to track progress and growth.

Activities to increase reading practice: Individual reading, explicit instruction, lots of authentic reading, writing. 

Rubrics: Snapshot of student scores, scales can be used like 1-5 to show a good understanding, no understanding, and great understanding. Using a scale allows for more accurate ideas of how well students understand certain skills.

Writer’s Voice: Style student writes in. Gives their writing a personal voice. Writer’s voice identifies who the writer is. The manner the student writes in, word choice, and tone are examples of components of writer’s voice. 

Dsyfluent Readers and Writers: Older students who have difficulty recognizing words causing their reading achievement to be slowed. These students may also struggle with writing and spelling, and comprehension.

Obstacles to Fluency: Lack of automaticity, unfamiliarity with word identification strategies, slow reading speed, slow writing speed, lack of prosody, voiceless writing.

Classroom Connection: This chapter has helped me understand what fluent reading looks like and the component it has. I have been able to relate to this chapter a lot being that I struggled with fluency in elementary school.