Fluency: More than Just Speed Reading

The three articles we read this week on Fluency all had pretty similar views on Fluency. Deeney's article, One-minute fluency measures: mixed messages in assessment and instruction resonated with me the most in its message about reading endurance. I agree that EXPERIENCE gives the reader fluency which in turn gives them endurance. In my opinion endurance is important with reading because it allows for long reading sessions that still are successful, even after time has passed. Another point that I loved in the Deeney article was the tid-bit on giving struggling readers easier factual information books to practice reading with. It eliminates the stigma of baby-books, while also giving the reader practice with something meaningful to their life. 

The other online article on Rasinski's Creating Fluent Readers gave me a great classroom idea that I cannot WAIT to try out. In this article reading practice took place in the creative Friday afternoon activities of mock "poetry cafes" and reader's theater festivals. This allows readers to perform reading pieces from the week with and for their fellow classmates. I love this way of PERFORMING the words. It takes reading them a step further, helping them with fluency. Also repeated readings are just great in general. Who doesn't love rereading something that made them so excited about reading in the first place? Not only does it boost confidence, but with each new reading, the reader gets something new out of the experience.

Our last reading, Chapter 4 of Classrooms that Work made me take a second look into the word wall. Instead of having a word wall, this chapter spoke of the importance of doing a word wall with my students. I love this interactive approach at creating a classroom tool that will help my readers with common words and to create an automaticity with the words as well.
By creating this tool together, the students internalize the information better, and allows everyone the ability to truly take advantage of the word wall. The image to the right shows how readers can make their reading style more interesting and offers many different ways on how to make it happen!

Another idea, from all three readings actually, I really enjoyed was allowing students to reread or just plain read "easy" books. Reading is hard enough for new readers, so allowing easy passages for your readers gives them confidence boosts, and allows them to focus on fluency more so than just trying to get the words out. To the left is an awesome fluency idea I found on helping your reader use different voices to make their reading more fluid. All those voices would be a blast for any classroom to try out!

 All of these articles gave me great ideas from my classrooms, but I want to know now:

• Which ideas stuck with you all?
• Does anyone have other ideas that they could share with me about fluency?
• Did anyone disagree with these ideas?