Chapter Six

Vocabulary for Chapter Six

• Reading fluency: the ability to read quickly, accurately, and with expression. To read fluently, students must have automaticity.

• Automaticity: The ability to recognize words automatically/on sight, without thought.

• Speed: students must develop adequate reading speed or rate to have the cognitive resources available to focus on meaning.

• Prosody: Reading expressively, students use their voices to add meaning to the words. Prosody includes **expression, phrasing, volume, smoothness, pacing.

• High-frequency words: Common words that readers use frequently, these change as children’s reading levels increase. Examples for a kindergarten class includes: he, a, am, at, can, is, my.

• Phonic analysis: Students use what they’ve learned about phoneme-grapheme correspondents and phonics rules to decode words using phonic awareness strategies.

• Syllabic analysis: More advanced students can decode words by breaking them into syllables, and identify the sound of each, to identify them.

• Morphemic analysis: Students use this to identify multisyllabic words. They locate the root word by peeling off prefixes and suffixes and identify the root word, then add the prefixes and/or suffixes back.

• Decoding by analogy: Students use this to identify words by associating them with words they already know. For example, students can decode small because they know the phonogram all and think of a word like ball and decode from there.

• Writers voice: Writers voice reflects the person writing, it’s essentially how you speak and your tone to an audience via writing. As students gain experience as readers their writers voice will emerge, especially while writing about topics they know well.
• **expression, phrasing, volume, smoothness, pacing defined.
  • Reading with enthusiasm and varying expression
  • chunking into phrases
  • smooth rhythm and quickly self correcting breakdowns.
  • reading a conversational speed.

Assessing Reading Fluency

Teacher informally monitor students’ reading fluency by listening to them read aloud during guided reading lessons, reading workshop, or other reading activities. Teachers specifically monitor automaticity, speed, and prosody and this is usually done quarterly or by semester.

Activities to Increase Reading Practice

• Reading aloud
• word walls and sight words
• readers theatre
• guided reading
• choral reading

There are much more activities but, these are a few.

Dysfluent readers and writers

Students usually become fluent readers by fourth grade. However, 10-15% of older students have difficulty recognizing words, and their reading achievement is slowed. Dysfluent readers struggle decoding words, speed, or prosody. It is crucial that teachers intervene and help overcome students struggles with fluency because they need to focus on meaning. The same conclusions can be drawn with dysfluent writers.

Ostacles to fluency

students who struggle with fluency may have a single problem, such as slow speed, or they may face numerous obstacles in both reading and writing. Providing targeted instruction is often necessary to help students overcome their obstacles. The most effective interventions include:

Obstacle #1: Lack of automaticity

Teachers use explicit instruction to teach students to read to read and write high-frequency words. Each week they focus on five words and involve students in these activities.

Obstacle #2: Unfamiliarity with word-identification strategies

Teachers include these components in their intervention programs to develop students’ ability to read and spell words.

Obstacle #3: Slow reading speed

The most important way that teachers intervene is by providing daily practice opportunities, such as choral reading, guided reading, and readers theatre, to develop students’s reading speed and stamina. Another way to improve reading speed is the repeated reading procedure, where students practice reading a text aloud three to five times, striving to improve their reading speed and reduce errors. Students time this and track their progress. Students also work on stamina through sustained silent reading, where they are working on how long they can read for.

Obstacle #4: Slow writing speed

The best way to improve this is through a lot of writing. Dysfluent writers often have trouble sustaining a writing project through the writing process. These four activities help effectively.

Obstacle #5: Lack of prosody

Teachers emphasize prosody by modeling expressive reading every time they read aloud and using the think-aloud procedure to reflect on how they varied their expression, chunked words into phrases, modulated the loudness of their voice, or varied their pacing. They talk about the importance of prosody for both fluency and comprehension and show students how meaning is affected when they read in a monotone or slow down their reading speed. Phrasing helps a lot with prosody as well because it helps the words flow smoothly.

Obstacle #6: Voiceless writing

doing a lot of reading and writing helps dysfluent writers develop their voices. As they read books and listen to the teacher read others aloud, students develop an awareness of the writers voice. Through minilessons and word-study activities students become aware of techniques they can apply in their own writing voices will come through.

Classroom application

The biggest take away from this chapter is the obstacles that dysfluent students face. Learning what these are and how to both recognize and intervene with these obstacles is a very big part of reading and writing. Without fluency my students will struggle greatly in all of their further schooling. I also am minoring in special education and will be learning about intellectual disabilities such as dyslexia. I think having that special education knowledge as well as the knowledge of the obstacles they may be already facing, will blend together nicely and help me help my students to the fullest I am able.