GET SET FOR LITERACY

FLUENCY

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Tamara Dahm

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Where does fluency fit

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What is fluency?

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“Accurate reading of connected text, at a conversational rate with appropriate prosody.”

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• Accuracy
• Automaticity (rate)
• Prosody (expression)

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It is the “bridge from word recognition accuracy to text comprehension”.

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Hudson et al., 2005

Pikulski and Chard, 2005

Orthographic mapping and self-teaching

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Fluent reading is only acquired through repeated decoding. This glues the spellings of words to the pronunciations stored in memory – the process of orthographic mapping.

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This means children need lots of opportunities to practise decoding, particularly in the early stages of learning to read.

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How to increase reading fluency

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How many chances do children have to decode each day? This influences orthographic mapping which leads to fluency.

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Use reading sessions to develop reading fluency through repeated oral reading of challenging texts (particularly from 6-10 years old).

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Reading fluency can be assessed (ORF).

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Fluency in the classroom

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• Echo reading
• Choral reading
• Buddy (paired) reading
• Repeated reading

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• Readers’ theatre – an engaging and entertaining way to build fluency and comprehension

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Repeated oral reading in the classroom

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• Adult always reads the text first
• Routines need to be practised beforehand – clear guidelines of expectations
• Stronger decoder to go first
• Focus on improvement rather than praise for outstanding reading

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Implications for teachers

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• Silent reading does NOT support the development of initial reading fluency.

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• Don’t limit fluency practice to poetry, songs, and speeches as punctuation is often used inconsistently.

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• Suggest ideas for building home-school connections that encourage families to become involved actively in children's reading development.

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Planning a fluency session

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• Select an appropriate text.
• Introduce new or difficult words and concepts to children and provide practice reading these words before they read on their own.
• Establish classroom expectations of how the session will work.
• Ensure children who need extra support have a stronger peer or adult with them.
• Always model fluent reading of the whole text, before students reread the text on their own.

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Fluency assessment

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• Using WCPM is an extremely time-efficient and reliable way to track students' fluency — and their overall reading ability.
• Because of its strong correlation with comprehension, WCPM can function as an accurate and powerful indicator of overall reading competence.

Fluency assessment – ORF (DIBELS)

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Fluency assessment – ORF (DIBELS)

EMPOWERING TEACHERS TO EMPOWER LEARNERS