Competency 9- Fluency: Instruction and Assessment

RICA Reflection

Competency 9: Fluency: Instruction and Assessment

Introduction

RICA Competency number nine addresses specific strategies building for accuracy, reading rate, and prosody. Working one-on-one or in a small group can assist students on their fluency.

Personal Connection/Evidence

There are a many ways that I have engaged with this competency.

Paired reading with a partner is how my tutees and I read together. I know that it is important for each of them to model how to read aloud and to each other. They seem to like that they take turns reading a page at a time. If one of them doesn’t know a word then the other tutee will help them out. I enjoy watching this interaction between them.

While reading with my students or my tutees I do hear myself giving a ton of feedback. I know that it is important to let them know how they are doing while reading. I want to encourage them to read all the time, so giving that little bit of feedback will hopefully inspire them to read wherever. One time with my tutee I encouraged her by saying, “I really loved that you keep trying to sound out the words!” after that she always tried.

Meeting the Needs of All Learners

Struggling readers and students with reading disabilities will need to have texts written at students’ independent reading level, focus on improving accuracy through additional word identification instruction, focus on recognition of key sight words, and improve the rate through additional practice.  

English Language Learners or speakers of nonstandard English will need to learn the tonal patterns and rhythms of English. Modeling through echo reading will help show EL’s how to put certain emphasis on certain words and how to stop or pause when there is a comma or a period.

Advanced learners will need to have the pace or complexity increased and extending the current knowledge and skills.

Assessment

There are several ways in which to assess the students to find out if they are progressing. “Fluency can only be assessed through oral reading.”(RICA p. 72) The student reading aloud assesses accuracy and the teacher records the errors. Timing the students in a timed test to see how fast they can go assessed by rate. Prosody is harder to assess but the teacher checks for appropriate pitch, response to punctuation and characterization. There are also entry-level, progress-monitoring, and summative assessments. Entry-level, progress-monitoring, and summative assessments are assessments that the teacher will administer when needed to check progress along the way. If the student is below grade level the teacher will need to figure out why. The teacher may have to go back to kindergarten levels to recheck the students skill level and move on from there to see where the problem is. To help with fluency check out this website.

Text-to-Text Connections

“Echo reading is a method of modeling oral reading in which the teacher reads a line of the story and then the students echo by reading the same line back, imitations the teacher’s intonation and phrasing.” (RLTR p. 227)

“The Fluency Oriented Reading Instruction was developed for whole group instruction with grade level basal readers, although many teachers have use the strategy with grade level trade books. FORi incorporates the research-based practices of repeated, assisted reading with independent silent reading within a three-part classroom program.The three components are a reading lesson that includes teacher-led, repeated oral reading, and partner reading, a free-reading period at school and home reading.” (RLTR p. 227) (In regards to Fluency- Orientated Reading Instruction)

“Prosody has a close relationship with comprehension since it incorporates the characteristics if oral reading that allows it to sound expressive.” (RLTR p. 223)

TPE Connections

TPE 2: Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction

TPE 3: Interpretation and Use of Assessments

TPE 4: Making Content Accessible

TPE 5: Student Engagement