Fluency

Helping Kids Read Fluently
National Resource Center for Paraprofessionals Conference
San Antonio, TX
March 1, 2012

Nancy K. French, Ph.D., President
Paraeducator Training Resources
PO Box 234
Silverthorne, CO 80498
970-468-4800 FAX 303-871-0838
Email: nancy@paraeduatortraining.com
Internet: www.paraeducatortraining.com

© Paraeducator Training Resources, Inc. 2009

Norms for Helping Kids Read Fluently
Sessions

 Commit to two sessions (1-2:30 ) and (3-4:30)
 1st pre-requisite for 2nd – they hang together
 Break from 2:30 – 3:00 – return on time
Raffle drawing at precisely 3:00 pm – you must be present to
win
 Everyone participates in all activities
 Ask questions as they arise – don‟t wait!
 If question will (for sure) be answered later, I may
defer my answer
 Respect everyone‟s opinion
 Limit side discussions during lecture and directions


Two Sessions: Helping Kids Read Fluently

 Session 1:  Session 2:
 Our experience Automaticity
with reading orally Reading Unfamiliar
Fluency concepts Text
and terms Calculating reading
Characteristics of difficulty of text
fluent and not-so- Techniques:
fluent readers buddy-reading
Effect of Practice choral reading.


Group Activity: Researching Our Own
Experiences
Directions:
15 minutes time limit – I‟ll announce passage of time every 5
minutes
1. Conduct research about the experience class participants
have with oral reading.
2. Stand and walk around the room looking for someone who can
answer an item affirmatively
3. Write that person‟s name on the line next to the statement
4. Ask them to tell you a little bit about that experience – but
briefly – 1 minute or less, then move on to another person and
repeat the process.
5. When all 10 items have a name return to your seat.


Group Discussion:

How do your own experiences impact your work with
children who are learning to read?


Individual Activity: Checking Your Own
Knowledge of Terms and Concepts

• Try to complete all the items on the
Survey of Fluency Terms
• If you don‟t know, leave it blank - you
will fill it in later as we review it (it‟s not
cheating to do that, I promise)
• When you finish as many as you can,
look up at me.
Directions: • Later, after the session, review this
page to remind yourself of how much
you learned.


Fluency – A Definition

 Fluency is the ability to read:
 Smoothly
 Easily
 Readily
 Accurately
 Quickly
 With freedom from word recognition problems
We know:
Fluency is necessary for good comprehension and
enjoyable reading – and it sounds natural!


Story Time
(Listen while I read to you)

 Mrs. Oshiro‟s story
 Students who do not develop fluency are
likely to remain poor readers throughout their
lives.
 In traditional classrooms, fluency has been
neglected
 It has relied heavily on the ineffective method
called “round robin” reading
 The result:
 44% of American students cannot read fluently, even
when they read grade-level materials aloud under
supportive testing conditions


Characteristics of Fluent Readers

 Fluent Readers:
 Rely on the letters in the words (rather than
context or pictures to identify familiar and unfamiliar
words)

 Look at and process every letter
 Use letter-sound correspondence to identify
words
 Have a reliable strategy for decoding words
 Read words a sufficient number of times for
them to become automatic


Lack of Reading Fluency

 Not-so-Fluent Readers…
 Have a slow, halting pace, word-by-word
reading
 Tend to have poor comprehension
 Make frequent mistakes
 Use poor phrasing
 Tend not to enjoy reading
 May have poor or weak word recognition
skills
 Have choppy and plodding oral reading skills


Activity: Putting this Information in Real
Life Context

 Divide into four groups
 Each group designates one person to take notes for the
group and be ready to report out at the end

 We will do the first one together as a model for you,
then your group will do it‟s assigned bullet point
 I‟ll assign each group one bullet point to discuss
 You have 5 minutes
 Use the lead-in sentence:
 What does it look like when a student cannot or does not…


The Matthew Effect
(The rich get richer, the poor get poorer)

 How the Matthew Effect Works in reading:

Good Readers:
Enjoy reading, feel successful with reading, and
Develop more vocabulary and greater comprehension, so
They read more – because they can, and thus become
“richer” in reading because they practice more

Struggling Readers:
Have difficulty reading, and
Don‟t enjoy it, and
Practice less, so
They have less vocabulary and weaker comprehension


Differences in Amount of Independent
Reading
Percentile Rank of Minutes of book Words read in
Reading reading per day books per year
Achievement
98 65 4,358,000

90 21.1 1,823,000

70 9.6 622,000

50 4.6 282,000

30 1.3 106,000

10 0.1 8,000

2 0.0 0


So, what do we do to help kids
read more?


Lecture: Independent Silent Reading
 Many names for it:
 SSR – Sustained Silent Reading
 USSR – Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading
 DEAR - Drop Everything And Read

 Limitations:
 Research shows pretty small gains from silent reading programs
 Students are not held responsible for what they read
 May be daydreaming, talking, engaging in other off-task
activities
 No way teachers can evaluate the rate, accuracy and
prosody of their reading, therefore, no way to provide
constructive feedback
 Students often choose their own materials – maybe
inappropriate for them for appearances‟ sake – pretense of
reading


As a Paraeducator, What Can You Do To
Make Silent Reading More Productive?


Discussion About
Anderson‟s Suggestions

1. Help students select books at appropriate reading levels and
related to their interests. Make book selection part of the
regular reading group activity.
 How do you calculate the level of reading difficulty for each
student?
2. After silent reading time, set aside time for students to
discuss what they read. Have students recommend books to
each other.
 How might this suggestion work in your situation?

3. Involve parents and other family members by giving them tips
on how to read with their children.
 What would you have to be cautious of if you were to do this?


End of Session 1

Session 2 starts in 30 minutes

At exactly 3:00 pm, we will have the drawing for the
prize! You must be present to win!

Then, we will learn about :
1. Automaticity
2. Reading Unfamiliar text
3. Calculating the reading difficulty of text

Session 2
Helping Kids Read
Fluently


Accurate and Automatic Word
Recognition in Fluent Reading

Fluency is the bridge between word
recognition and comprehension
 Fluent readers recognize words and
comprehend at the same time
 Less fluent readers focus a lot of attention on
word recognition, thus they can‟t focus as much
energy on comprehension
 Automaticity is a critical skill because it allows
readers to spend their energy comprehending
instead of decoding words.


Automaticity

 When we do something with automaticity, we do it
without conscious attention.
 Examples:
 Driving a standard transmission car
 Playing a sport – e.g. golf, skiing, diving
 Knitting or crocheting
 Playing a musical instrument
 It takes a lot of practice to get to that point.


Students who read with automaticity

 Read with no noticeable cognitive or mental effort
 Have mastered work recognition to the point of over
learning
 Do not have to expend conscious attention with the
fundamental skills
 Simultaneously decode and comprehend a passage that
they read or listen to
 Pace their reading rate depending on the structure of the
text they are reading
 Read text orally using appropriate phrasing and
expression.


Reading Unfamiliar Text

Silently read the passage below and write a brief
summary.

The doctrine of “res ipsa loquitor” is
inapposite, and the appellee‟s
reliance thereon is misplaced and
disingenuous.


The Translation

The doctrine behind “res ipsa loquitor”
assumes that a person must be to
blame because it couldn‟t be anyone
else, it doesn‟t fit these facts, and the
person using this argument is wrong
and insincere.


Activity: Debriefing Reading
Unfamiliar Text
Pair up with someone near you and discuss each of the
questions below:

1. Did you know all of the words in the passage? Did you
know at least half of them? Was that enough?

2. Did you know how to pronounce all of the words?
3. Did you hesitate trying to make meaning of the reading?
If ‘yes’, why?
4. Would you have been tense about reading it out loud?
If ‘yes’, why?
5. Would you have been sure of yourself when reading it?
If ‘no’, why?


Let‟s see if this Summarizes it

 You couldn‟t read the legal passage fluently
 You struggled with decoding the words (figuring out
how you would pronounce them)
 Even if you could can pronounce the words, you
really don‟t for sure know what they mean
 If there had been a test over this material, you
would have failed even though you “read” it.


Individual Activity: Reflection

 Directions: Using the sheet called Reflections:
“This is really hard” maintain silence while you…

1. Write your thoughts about what you learned
from the previous activity
2. Write some ideas about how you might apply
what you now know about your own reading to
the struggling readers you know


Lecture: Automaticity and Working
Memory

Working memory is a process, occurring in
the brain, that
stores short-term information while we are using
it, and (main feature is that it goes away quickly
when stop using it)
 recalls stored memories from long-term
„storage‟ by thinking about how that information
relates to our current situation


Overlearning: The Path to
Automaticity

1. Overlearning is the key to automaticity
2. How do you overlearn something?
 Remember ?
 driving the stick shift?
 Throwing a basketball?
 Holding knitting needles?
 Playing your first piano piece?
3. We practice.
4. But we can practice only what is physically
and mentally do-able. (I can‟t practice handstands
if I can‟t do a handstand)


Overlearning in Reading

Students can only practice reading what
they can read
So they have to practice reading materials of an
appropriate level – either easy, or just
moderately difficult

How do you know what is an appropriate
level?
 You can test the appropriateness of reading
material by calculating WCPM (Words Correct Per
Minute)


Activity: Calculating Words Correct
Per Minute (WCPM)

 Directions:
Pair up – one person is the paraeducator , the other is the
student
ƒ
Each uses the appropriate form from your handout
(paraeducator copy p. 60-61, student copy p. 62)

 “Students”: leave your copy face down for a couple of
minutes while the “Paraeducator” reviews their handouts

 Silence please:
1. Paraeducators: Read the four bullet-point directions
at top of your handout – ask questions now, before we
start the activity


Activity
1. Student reads the passage orally!
 you will notice that there are errors in your passage so that
the “paraeducator” has something to record
 just read it as it is written

2. Paraeducator marks sheet as student reads aloud
3. When “time” is called, remove the student‟s sheet
from her
4. Ask 5 comprehension questions – marking + for
correct or – for incorrect answers
5. Without showing the answers, switch roles
6. Do the activity again


Scoring
Work together on this part
1. Establish a reading level …
• Count the number of words read (up to the /)
• Subtract the number of “incorrect” words from that (this
= # of words read correctly)
• This gives you the student‟s WCPM – words correctly
read per minute (write this in the first blank – WCPM)
• Now, divide the number of words read correctly by the
total number of words read to get % of accuracy (write
this is the second blank)
• Example 165÷197 = .837563 , then round it off to .84 or
84%


Next – Comprehension Questions

Five questions – each worth 20%
Write this in the third blank –
Example: 4 questions answered right would be 80%

Now use the table on Handout B H8 (p. 63)
to determine whether the reading level of
difficulty is Independent, Instructional, or
Frustration


Passage Accuracy and
Comprehension

Level of Difficulty Word Recognition Comprehension
Accuracy

Independent 95% or > > 90%

Instructional >85% grades 1-2 > 75%
< 90% grades 3-12

Frustration < 85% grades 1-2 < 50%
< 90% grades 3-12


Do We Need More Practice?
Student A reads a total of 87 words in one
minute and makes 12 errors. Calculate the
WCPM and accuracy.


Still More?

Student B reads a total of 153 words in one
minutes and makes 5 errors. WCPS?
Accuracy?


Even More?

Student C reads a total of 119 words in one
minute and makes 8 errors. WCPM?
Accuracy?


One last try…

Student D reads a total of 92 words and
makes 11 errors. WCPM? Accuracy?


If There‟s Time….

 Let‟s see if we can become more fluent reading the
passage from the “Paraeducator” Copy (B H6 p. 60)

 Handouts p. 123-126 contain lots of ways that you
can help students read more fluently

 Let‟s try Teacher-Student Assisted Reading
I‟m the teacher – you are all my students
I read aloud, one section at a time, you repeat after me
We do it again and again until you are as fluent as I am
But First, let‟s discuss some things….


Some Strange Words

Spumy = having foam, a mass of fine bubbles on the
surface of a liquid, especially on the ocean

Potlatch = among Native American peoples of the
coast of northwestern North America, a ceremony of
feasting in which the host gains prestige by giving gifts or,
sometimes, destroying wealth


Some Background Info

Where in the world is this?
What is the geography like?
What is the weather like?
Who are these people?
When is this?


Now Let‟s Read Aloud

I read a little section
You repeat after me

Again, and again
Until you sound good!


Thank You

Today you experienced part of the CO-TOP
Assisting with Fluency Academy
Normally it would take 15 hours to cover all the
content
Today, I picked certain parts that we could do in
just 3 hours
You didn‟t get it all, but you did get some of it
For more information about CO-TOP Academies
go to www.paraeducatortraining.com

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