What GOOD readers do when they read

Oftentimes, my CT has me work with a specific student in order to help her develop her comprehension strategies, and fluency; however, this past Monday, my CT was at a conference and the substitute asked me to take over a literacy group in the back corner. Relatively speaking, the students I was working with were about average in their reading abilities. Since I was unsure of where the group was, in relation to reading their stories and completing assignments, I decided to go with the flow, and just talk to the students about their book, how they were doing, how they liked the story, etc.

Once the group, five students, were seated and attentive, I posed the following question…”What makes a student a ‘good reader’? First of all, fourth graders have strong opinions about their reading and the reading of their peers. They are well aware of who is struggling and who is over achieving. Second of all, their opinions are very worthwhile to hear and understand, and I felt strongly that having them voice their thoughts and opinions, in relation to this topic, could shed a lot of light on their thinking, and why they think a certain way. I also wanted to convey an implicit message; that is, “How you think, and feel, is important to me, and I want you to take ownership in your learning.”

The insights they provided me with, were VERY enlightening, and I want to share them with you. I think you’ll be surprised at how intuitive, thoughtful, and right on, their thinking is!

• “Good readers know why they are reading something and they don’t just read to read, they have reasons behind it.”

• “A lot of good readers will look through the book first, before they read the whole thing, and then they’ll read all of it…they look for pictures.”

• “Good readers talk to their teacher and to their friends about the book they are reading. Sometimes, they will guess what the book is about before they even read it.”

• “Sometimes, if a reader is really good, they stop and write notes about what they are reading…like, if they don’t know a word they will stop and look it up, or if they don’t get something they’ll ask questions.”

• “Good readers can read really fast, they can a whole book in, like, a day!”

• “Well, if you’re a good reader, then you can read like you talk.”

As you can see…my students had a lot to share! I wasn’t sure where this question would lead us, but it turns out, we were able to continue this discussion for a good fifteen minutes. If you look closely at their comments, you’ll see that they’re right! Everything they mentioned is one aspect of what it takes to be a good reader. I was very impressed and proud of the thoughtfulness and metacognitive thinking my students displayed. Hopefully, their ability to understand what it takes to be a successful reader will help them in their own journey towards higher reading levels.

Working with my Focus Student

For the duration of my time working in my fourth grade class, there is one specific student that I have spent a great deal of time helping. Alexa* is a kind, outgoing, and charismatic fourth grader who struggles in regards to her literacy development. When our spring semester commenced, my CT became aware of my literacy focus for the remainder of the year; therefore, he asked that I spend some quality time working with Alexa on her reading skills (specifically pertaining to her comprehension strategies and level of fluency). Seeing as how I was in the field during the students’ reading workshop time, I was able to spend a large amount of my time working one-on-one with Alexa. At the outset, I had Alexa pick out books she was either interested in, or books she was reading in her reading group, and we would sit in the hallway as she slowly worked her way through the various stories. This allowed the two of us time to develop a friendly, comfortable, and supportive relationship.

As our relationship solidified, I made a point to speak to Alexa directly, in regards to the reasons behind our working together. First, I explained that we’re working together for a reason, and I asked her opinion as to why that is. Alexa is an intelligent and observant kid; she was/is well aware of the difficulties she encounters in regards to her reading ability, and she had no problem articulating this to me. I took this opportunity to talk to Alexa about some specifics; where she struggles, why, how we can help her through our work together, and how she can help HERSELF.

After talking to my CT, I’ve come to the realization that students need to understand and participate in their attempt to achieve academic success. Through direct, and explicit, conversations with students (in regards to their specific struggles), I believe children will feel an ownership, and take more responsibility for their learning; exactly what I was striving for with Alexa.

As the semester has progressed, the activities we participate in together have slowly evolved. About four or five weeks ago, (I think), my CT and I took some time to sit and discuss Alexa’s development. As it turned out, my CT had recently been a participant at a literacy conference that focused on comprehension strategies and the importance of fluency in struggling readers. Obviously, Alexa was at the forefront of his mind. At this point, I had the opportunity to do some research on the literature my CT received at the conference. (I’ve been meaning to ask him the name of the conference, as well as the name of the text, but it keeps slipping my mind). I learned a great deal, and I’ve been able to execute a variety of strategies while working with Alexa.

Strategies in the Classroom

I forgot to mention some things in my last two posts that I really wanted to share with you two. As you may know, I’m currently in a fourth grade class. I’ve been working one on one for the past few weeks with a student who is struggling with reading fluency. My Cooperating Teacher (CT) took me aside and asked if I could review an article he received from a conference on reading strategies. The article gave a very thorough look into ways in which you can help a student gain a higher level of fluency. After I took the time to review and makes notes on this article, my CT and I reviewed it together. He asked if I would use the strategies found in this article to work with my focus student on her fluency.

Basically, what I began doing was picking out books that had a rhythm to them; such as Doctor Seuss books, or books with rhymes, etc. I chose these books because when read with prosody, the reader can easily feel the rhythm; however, when read in a monotone voice, the beat/rhythm, is extremely difficult to make out. So, Alexa* and I would go to the media room and we would read and re-read these books together. I would start by reading the first two sentences with exaggerated expression and I would then have Alexa* re-read exactly what I just read; and so on. If she didn’t utilize the same expression that I did, I’d tell her to try again. Obviously, before we began these activities, I made sure to remind her that we’re doing this so she can develop her fluency and that I wanted her to be able to comprehend what she was reading. At first, Alexa* was REALLY annoyed with all of the repetition; but, as we worked together over the weeks, I think she really got into. She started utilizing a lot of expression in her voice without me even having to remind her.

Another strategy that we utilized was this…Alexa would read a story (at her level) on her own, then she would read it to me, THEN she would go to the back of the room and tape record herself reading it. Once she was through with that process, together, we would listen to the tape and pause and re-start to point out parts where she made mistakes or where she lacked expression.

I just wanted to point out some strategies that I’ve been using that have been REALLY helpful. It’s actually been a lot of fun helping Alexa* and seeing how quickly her fluency is improving.

Once again...Fluency

I read Chapter 6: “Developing Fluent Readers and Writers” from Literacy for the 21^st Century: A Balanced Approach, fifth edition, written by Gail E. Tompkins, AFTER I read the article on fluency that I just posted about. And I have to say, while I obviously found this chapter to be extremely informational, as well as a great resource to look back on due to the vast amount of resources listed in tables throughout the text, I did find it a little repetitive to read both the article AND the chapter during the same week. I would’ve rather have split this two texts up throughout the course of our semester. That being said, I did find this chapter to be very informational. I did appreciate the fact that Tompkins included the concept of writing fluency alongside the concept of reading fluency. Often, I feel that writing fluency is overlooked in the grand scheme of things.

I love reading a text in which an author goes out of his or her way to incorporate strategies, resources, assessment activities, etc. in the reading. It makes for an extremely informational and essential resource that I will obviously utilize in my future. There are numerous tables presented that list high-fluency words, word to incorporate on a primary grade’s “word wall”, mini-lessons, assessment tools, strategies, etc. and I will definitely go back to these when I’m teaching my future students fluency.

I found one specific section of this chapter to be the most beneficial and that was the section that specified the four different strategies that students use to identify unfamiliar words. I found this section to be the most beneficial due to the fact that students of ALL ages must use these strategies. Tompkins stated that “Beginning readers encounter many unfamiliar words, and even fluent readers come upon words that they don’t immediately recognize” (p. 197). That being said, it is obviously important for teachers to help their students develop the strategies necessary for decoding these unfamiliar words. The four strategies include:

• Phonic Analysis
• Decoding by Analogy
• Syllabic Analysis
• Morphemic Analysis

The chart at the bottom of page 197 was very useful in explaining what these strategies are and providing examples.

All in all, the Chapter 6: “Developing Fluent Readers and Writers” had a few main, important facts that I came away with. Those important facts are as follows…

• It is important for teachers to instruct students and enable them to recognize high-frequency words and help children develop a “bank” of sight-words to draw from.
• Teachers need to explicitly teach students a variety of strategies to utilize when attempting to identity unfamiliar words.
  
• Teachers need to use a variety of different procedures that are integrated throughout the day and used repetitively, in order to help develop students’ reading fluency...same goes for writing fluency...and...
• Third grade is an important cut off time for students to have developed reading/writing fluency, and if they haven’t then regular assessments need to occur as they progress through school.

Developing Fluent Readers

I just finished reading the article “Reading Fluency Assessment and Instruction: What, Why, and How?” written by Rosanne F. Hudson, Holly B. Lane, and Paige C. Pullen. I found this article to be VERY informational. Being elementary school teachers, our responsibility lies, not only with teaching students how to read, but also with teaching students how to become skilled readers, and skilled readers are fluent readers. During my junior year, when I was in TE 301, I spent a good deal of time connecting the dots between reading comprehension and reading fluency; however, I had never focused my attention solely on the different aspects of reading fluency and how theses aspects are directly correlated to a student’s level of comprehension. According to the reading, “fluent reading [is] comprise[d] of three key elements” (p. 1). At its foundation, these three elements are – accuracy, rate, and prosody. It’s important to realize that, as teachers, we need to assess our students' abilities to read fluently, in order to accurately and fairly instruct our class in an attempt to foster a deeper level of reading comprehension.

Automaticity is an important aspect of fluency to keep in mind. This refers to how quickly a student is capable of identifying words. Due to the limited capacity of a student’s working memory…when they are capable of identifying words at a faster rate, their cognitive abilities are free to focus on the context of what they are reading as opposed to focusing on word identification.

Another important aspect of reading fluency relates to a student’s ability to accurately decode words. Decoding refers to the process a student goes through when they are reading…it is composed of: seeing a word, recognizing the letter-sound relationship, and blending the phonemes together to create a word. This is a process that, in a fluent reader, should take a split second; however, for a struggling reader, the process of decoding can be extremely difficult. It is the teacher’s job to explicitly identify word-identification/decoding strategies for the class.

One aspect of this article that I found surprising relates to the section covering the importance of prosody. I have never really considered how important a student’s ability to read with expression is in correlation to their reading comprehension. BUT, it makes sense. I mean, if a student reads a question in their text like a statement, then they obviously do not comprehend what they are reading. If they did, then that statement they just read would be phrased like a question.

Not only did this article give in depth details and information regarding exactly WHAT fluency is, but, what I found most interesting, was the amount of information given in relation to HOW to teach fluency and HOW to ASSESS fluency. There are numerous tables and resources given that an instructor can reference and utilize in the future, which I most certainly will; specifically on the fifth and eighth pages of this article, two tables are given with listed assessment strategies and instructional resources. One thing I want to point out is how important it is to be EXPLICIT in your instruction of fluency with struggling readers…for some, fluency comes naturally, but for a majority of students, it does not. We are severely impeding their learning progress by not giving these students ample instruction, opportunities for practice and repetition, and adequate assessments that detail their progress.

I really enjoyed reading this article and it is definitely something that I see myself looking back on in the future.

"I am not a speed reader...I am a speed understander" - Isaac Asimov

Why is reading comprehension important?? Because it is! Although strong reading skills can help students succeed in language arts and reading class, it is really, only, the beginning. Students have to use reading skills in every single subject they study and in every aspect of life. For example, students need to comprehend challenging science textbooks, work problems, directions, text in an application, as well as the newspaper, websites, etc. It is important, as teachers, that we intervene and address the issues that students encounter in relation to reading comprehension. Those who struggle in elementary school may fall so far behind that they will have limited opportunities as an adult. I don’t want that to be the story of my students.

Currently, I’m spending a lot of time working on reading comprehension with one of my fourth graders. She spends a lot of time in the reading resource room and she struggles with vocabulary and using an “expressive” voice as she reads. All of these issues are negatively affecting her ability to comprehend what she is reading. Often, she will have to read, out loud, a story two or more times in order to tell me what it is about. After talking with my CT about this, we decided that in order to help her comprehension, first, we need to address her fluency. If she can pay less attention to the words, sentences, etc. we hope that she will be able to pay more attention to the content. I think that being able to read expressively without and “choppiness” will be extremely beneficial in the long run. When you can read a story with expression, then you have to understand what is going on. For instance, if you read in a monotone then you miss the exciting, sad, or scary parts of a story; but if you pay attention to those aspects and your voice reflects that, then you will have a much better chance at developing your comprehension.

I like to use the process of “predicting” to help students will comprehension too. I feel that it really forces students to pay attention to what they are reading, seeing, hearing, etc. About half-way through a story, I will stop the student and ask them “What do you think is about to happen? Why?” this forces the students to think about what they’ve read and apply it. They also have to explain themselves and their thought process which is a really high-level metacognitive skill that can promote comprehension too.

According to the National Reading Panel (NRP) “comprehension is an active process that requires an intentional and thoughtful interaction between the reader and the text”. That being said, it is important that we ask students questions during and after reading that forces them to think about what they read and apply it. This interaction between themselves and the text will be greatly beneficial.