Fluency

The three components of fluency are speed rate, accuracy and prosody. A fluent reader can read with all those aspects. Only when all three of these aspects are mastered is when a person becomes a fluent reader. Speed or rate is very clear, it is how quickly you can read a passage or book and how many words you can read correct per minute. For every grade level, there is a certain number of words per minute that every child in a certain grade should be able to read, teachers use this number to gauge what children may need to practice or need more instruction. Accuracy is about how many words the student got correct. A student’s accuracy will improve as they continue reading and expanding their vocabulary. Prosody has its own components. Prosody is defined as the melody of language as it is read or spoken (Rasinski). The components of prosody are, expression, stress, pitch, phrasing and rhythm. Each of this components play a role in the way you read the text. The definitions of these are…

Expression- Is a statement or question

Stress- Is when you add stress to certain words over others

Pitch- Is how high or low your voice is

Phrasing- Pausing at punctuation

Rhythm- Pace of reading

The students will learn this by learning what different symbols such as exclamation points and question marks do to the intonation of your voice while reading. The three components of fluency are all important to forming a well-rounded, fluent reader (Rasinski, T. V).

The ability to assess the three components of fluency is essential to be able to determine how close students are to mastering fluency. There are very simple ways to assess all the components of fluency. When assessing speed and accuracy educators can figure out the number of words correct per minute (WCPM) for each student. To calculate the WCPM the educator subtracts the total number of errors from the total number of words read in one minute. Educators are also able to assess accuracy by doing a running record (Creating Fluent Readers). A running record is when a teacher has a script of the book the student is reading and for every word correct the teacher just makes it with a tally. But when the student mispronounces a word or substitutes a word with a different word the teacher marks the word the student mispronounced. Teachers can assess students’ prosody by hearing them read out loud. These components together make a fluent reader and each of these aspects can be assessed and developed with the right instruction (Understanding and Assessing Fluency).

Fluency alone is important for all readers, but fluency also connects to other aspects of literacy. Fluency is largely connected to comprehension. Fluency is so important for comprehension because the more fluent a reader is, the easier words are identified and the reader can spend more time understanding what was read. Timothy Rasinski is a professor of literacy education and a strong advocate for the connection of fluency and comprehension. “Rasinski stressed Fluency’s connection to reading comprehension, the more fluent the readers the more the reader can focus on reading comprehension” (McLaughlin, M., & Overturf, B. J). Research has shown a strong correlation between comprehension and fluency. Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp and Jenkins tested oral recall, cloze (fill in the blank), question answering and oral reading fluency were tested for comprehension. Oral recall scored a .7, cloze scored a .72, question answering scored a .82 but oral reading fluency scored a .91. Without fluency and comprehension students would not be readers. Vocabulary also connects to fluency, because as a child’s vocabulary expands the more accurately students can identify those words while reading or can help students more accurately identify unknown words (Fluency). Vocabulary influences fluency and fluency influences comprehension, the different aspects of literacy all connect to each other and one without the other would leave people illiterate (Rasinski, T).

Theory of automaticity-

Automaticity is the ability to do things without thinking too hard about what you are trying to do. This is usually the result of learning, repetition and practice. This theory of automaticity summed up means that the more you do something the more automatic it becomes and the less attention is needed. This theory greatly benefits educators because it allows teachers to concentrate more on their students and the learning that is occurring. Over time teachers can make certain skills automatic, for example planning or classroom management, which in turn allows the teacher to give more attention to other processes. Automaticity does not occur over night this is a process that teachers will need to promote in their classrooms and with their students. The theory of automaticity in regards to fluency is that children need to be able to read and identify words with automaticity. The reading should feel effortless (Automaticity in Language Teaching & Learning).

Website- http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading-basics/fluency

This website is from Reading Rockets. This page of the website is about defining fluency and what it means to be a fluent reader. It also clarifies how fluency is connected to other aspects of literacy. But the best part of this page is that there are links specifically for teachers, parents, research and guides. For teachers, the website suggests different strategies that can be used to help develop a child’s fluency and guidelines on how to instruct fluency. For parents, it suggests things that parents can do at home to help and choices certain books that are the right level for your child, and why fluency matters. This website is incredibly informative for both parents and educators.

Apps-

Voice Memo- just recording reading (Free)

This app is simply a voice recorder but teachers can use this in their classroom and parents can have their children practice their reading and record them reading. From a YouTube review I found, teachers would supply a student with a passage or book to read and have the children record themselves reading it. The recordings on the app are saved automatically and then the student would send the recording to their teacher. This app is free but it doesn’t test on rate, expressiveness or accuracy it will just simply record the student reading. But this could be implemented as a station for students to do during reading time or for a small group instruction. If the teacher was working with a small group of children the children could go in the hall and spread out each with an iPad or computer to use this app and record themselves reading out loud and send it to their teacher. The teacher could listen to each recording on their own time then come back together with the group the next day and give each student feedback to work on with fluency. For parents using this outside of the classroom parents could record their children reading a book or passage and save that recording. The parents could continue to record their children for an extended amount of time and listen to each recording looking for progress. If there is no progress the parents could ask the teacher or advice or strategies to use. If the student is progressing the parents can replay audio to the children showing the differences in each recording and help the children hear themselves and target what to work on.

Fluency+- Michael Tillyer ($2.99)

This app was created by Michael Tillyer and it is synced with Google Docs. This app does cost $2.99. This app aims to be a tool for teachers to use in the classroom. Teachers can create and share reading scripts on Google Docs. Students need to log into Google Apps and select a reading script to read. Once the student has selected a piece to read the app will record the student as they read and calculate the words per minute and saves this information to the teachers Google Drive folder for later reviews. This app calculates words per minute which helps educators and parents gain important information about an intricate part of fluency, and about an individual child. An app being able to calculate words per minute could greatly benefit children and parents so they do not need to calculate it by hand. Again, this can be used as a station during a reading activity or in small groups. In a classroom, have 3 or 4 students independently record themselves reading a passage and send me their recording and their words per minute score. Teachers would then listen, and take notes of the students reading. The next day give the students feedback on their reading and have them continue reading on their own. Later, have them read another passage and record it and send their new words per minute score to their teacher. The teacher could then check for improvements and more feedback. The downside of this app again is that it is not able to consider expressiveness, but it is a resource for children to practice fluent reading and a great tool for teachers to track a student’s progression. Some teachers that do not like dealing with lots of accounts may not like this because from the description it does seem like teachers do need to use Google Apps and Google Docs. The app does allow students to zoom in on the text for students that have difficulty reading small text and it also has a “specific dyslexic friendly font”, I am not 100% sure what that is but this app is trying to make it accessible and useful for all students (Fluency by Michael Tillyer).

Fluency bugbrained Level 1, 2, 3 ($1.99)

This app was designed around the common core standards. This app costs $1.99 but aims to target all aspects of fluency including accuracy, expression, and automaticity. This app is compiled of small lessons through interactive video. This app has designed their home screen by having different sections, those sections are expression, accuracy, rate and smoothness. This app uses the acronym EARS to talk about those 4 aspects of fluency. This app defines fluency and has examples of a “good readers” and “bad readers”. It helps show the difference in your voice when you are reading with expression and has children do activities all based on fluency. This App however does not record children’s reading or calculate words per minute. This app is more designed to as an interactive learning lesson. The children learn more about each aspect of fluency and practice identifying it and hearing what a fluent reader sounds like. This app is different from the other two apps because of that but this could be a fun way for children to learn about the different aspects of fluency and participate in an interactive lesson. If every child in the class had an iPad to use it may be too expensive for the school to buy this app for every child’s iPad but the teacher could designate a few iPads to be used strictly for stations or for certain children to use when instructed. If a class was doing literacy stations for 30 minutes of class or so this could be a station. Have 3 or 4 iPads with this app ready to use and have the children play around with this app and learn about fluency and do the activities. Depending on the teacher they could have the children explore the app and play with it or they could specifically ask the students to work on one particular section, for example possibly have the children only working on expression or expression and accuracy. This app can also be a fun way for parents to get their children more interested in fluency or as way to help your child catch up to their grade level standards if they are behind (Fluency Level 1 by Bugbrained, LLC).