I found the reading that we did this week very interesting. When I related it to the kinds of fluency instruction that I have seen in my placement classroom this year, I found it difficult to see connections at first. Then I thought back to some of the lessons that I overheard my MT teaching small groups of students. Whenever she pulls individual grades to give them their homework for the week and new spelling words, they always review word patterns (such as CVC) and the definitions of words like syllable, root, base, prefix, and suffix. The older the students, the more advanced fluency concepts they cover. One thing that was mentioned often in the fluency chapter but is absent from the classroom where I am currently placed is a word wall. At first I thought that this was only a staple in younger grades, where students are learning how to read and spell an abundance of words throughout the year. However, after reading the Tompkins chapter, I believe that they can also be used effectively in the upper elementary classrooms.
I believe that the most effective way to enhance accuracy in the upper elementary grades is to be sure that students have resources to figure out how to read unfamiliar words. If students simply skip over words that they do not know or understand, they are not going to develop into more fluent readers because their accuracy will be stagnant. One of the ways to be sure that students know how to read unfamiliar words is to teach them how to segment words into roots, suffixes, and prefixes. If students understand and can identify what the root of a word means, they have a much better chance of identifying what the word as a whole means. One way to enhance a student's reading speed is to engage them in repeated reading. I found this to be a very effective way to help the second grade student that I worked with last year become a more confident and knowledgeable reader. It was amazing how much her comprehension improved by simply reading through information more than once. If students know that they are allowed and encouraged to read through information more than once, their experience as readers and their reading speed will improve. The aspect of fluency that the students in my placement classroom need the most work on is prosody. Many of them read either with no expression or take a short break after each word that they read. I think that chunking certain passages of text together could be a very effective way to help students develop their prosody. Also, educating students on what to do when they are reading and reach different punctuation marks can be an effective way to teach prosody.
Mini-Lesson (book club novel: The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis)
- Objective
- Students will develop their prosody through phrasing and chunking.
- Rationale
- I
chose to focus on prosody in this lesson because that is the aspect of
fluency that I have noticed a majority of my students struggle with.
- Materials
- Copy of book for each student
- White board/dry erase markers
- Lesson (brief overview)
- Today we are going to work on being more expressive readers. It is important to read with expression, especially when we are reading out loud, to keep both ourselves and our listeners interested in what is happening in the book. Right now I'm going to take you through a passage in the book that we have already read together and we are going to work on reading it more expressively. Please turn to page 34.
- I am going to "chunk" one of the paragraphs on this page to make it easier for everyone to see where they should take a breath or a short pause. One thing to look for when you think about pausing is punctuation. Commas and periods give us a natural place to stop and take a breath while we are reading.
- [Write on board]
- His mother didn't answer.
- But Michael heard her sigh.
- "You don't even care about Aunt Dew's stuff,"
- Michael yelled a little.
- He even pulled away from his mother.
- He didn't care at all about her hugging him.
- Sometimes it seemed to him that grown-ups never cared about anything
- unless it was theirs and nobody else's.
- He wasn't going to be like that when he grew up
- and could work and could do anything he wanted to do.
- Now I am going to read through this paragraph taking pauses at the end of each line. [do so].
- Now I want you, as a group [which is also mentioned in Tompkins ch.6] to read this paragraph to me, making a pause at the end of each line.
- Now we are going to alternate sentences. I will start, and when I get to a period, I want you, as a group, to read the next sentence. When you reach a period, I will take over again.
- [If students are still not understanding this concept, continue to have small groups of them read this passage together--split them in half, all the girls, all the boys, etc. If they are behaving and can handle it without hurting feelings, have the students critique each other on how they are reading. This will help them notice what expressive readers sound like].
- Conclusion
- You all did a great job reading today. Now, every time that you see a long paragraph with a lot of information in it, remember that you can split it up into different parts. Try to get through each sentence without pausing, and use your best expression if you are reading out loud. That will make it much more interesting for the person or people who are listening to you.
- Assessment
- I will continue to read with this group of students, and will pay attention to their expression and prosody as they read aloud. If they are still struggling with their phrasing, a similar lesson may be necessary.