Key Vocabulary:
Reading Fluency: A student’s ability to read quickly and accurately while also comprehending the reading.
Automaticity: A student’s ability to read a familiar word without sounding it out.
Speed: Literally the speed at which a student reads. A.K.A Words per Minute
Prosody: Expression and intonation while reading.
High Frequency Words: Common words that readers do not need to sound out because they can recognize them.
Word Walls: Important words that the teacher has written down and posted on a wall of the classroom.
Word Identification Strategies: Strategies that readers use to figure out unfamiliar words.
Phonic Analysis: A word identification strategy where the student sounds out a word.
Decoding by Analogy: A word identification strategy where students compare an unknown word to a similar known word in order to learn the unknown word. E.g. hat compared to cat.
Syllabic Analysis: A word identification strategy where students break unknown words into their individual syllables in order to more easily determine how to pronounce it.
Morphemic Analysis: A word identification strategy where students remove the prefixes and suffixes of the unknown word.
Interactive Writing: The students working with the teacher to write a single message.
Guided Reading: Personalized instruction for small groups of students who are at similar reading levels.
Language Experience Approach: Teaching students how to read and write based on the vocabulary that they already have experience with.
Choral Reading: A small group of students who are at a similar reading level reading in unison.
Assessing Reading Fluency: The process of a teacher formally or informally tracking a student’s improvement in their reading fluency.
Activities to Increase Reading Practice: Any reading activity that helps a student improve their reading fluency.
Rubrics: Scoring guides for assignments.
Running Records: Formal records documenting whether a specific book is in a student’s Independent Reading Level, Instructional Reading Level, or Frustrational Reading Level.
Writer’s Voice: The words, phrases, and syntax choices that a writer uses.
Dysfluent Readers and Writers: Students who are not fluent in either reading or writing.
Obstacles to Fluency: Anything that gets in the way of a student’s fluency.
Classroom Application:
As a teacher, it is important to keep track of your students’ reading fluency. Students who are not able to read fluently are not able to comprehend the meaning of the reading and are therefore not able to enjoy the reading. If students do not enjoy reading, they will be less interested and will not improve in their fluency. Obviously, this is not a good outcome, so it is important for teachers to track their students’ fluency and intervene if necessary.
Morgan Wyatt 