In my placement last week one of the teachers who assists with the class during groups was absent. Because of this I was able to take over her position for the day. I didn't do anything extremely exciting or get to teach the students, but I was excited to be in charge. All of the students in the classroom were preparing to present their country projects for the following day. In my group the students had a sheet that they had to pratice reading so that they were prepared to present it in front of the school. I did not make the connection that this was a fluency building task until I read for class! I was excited to see how well they related. In the text (and in class actually) it discussed that allowing students to reread the same text/story could only be beneficial. It is so true! Time after time of reading they began to feel more and more comfortable reading the story. Some even restated it by memory! I was so proud of them!
Another fluency related story - today my teacher had to call one of the student's parents and discuss their reading response homework. For reading response the children get a sheet that they have to fill out while reading a book. This sheet includes the title, author, main characters, plot, and something interesting that they read in the story. Most all students get sent home with a book to read, and they can choose to read that one or any other of their choice. Anyways, I overheard my teacher on the phone with the parent, who seemed to be complaining that her son did not have stories in his folder that were correlated with his reading level. The teacher then stated, "He can read any book he wants. He can read the same one over and over and over if he wants. Any reading is going to help." I related what she said back to fluency and it is so true. If he did choose to reread one story he might create sight words for himself which may increase his fluency in the future.
Very interesting. It was nice to be able to relate something we discussed in class to real-life examples! :)
That's so exciting you got to take over the assistant teacher's position for the day! On another note, my cooperating teacher does a similar fluency strategy in the classroom. She pairs the students up into different groups and gives each pair a book from the basal. Each pair has 20 minutes to read their story over and over again until the time runs out. They do this daily (Monday-Thursday) until Friday, in which the pairs of students have to read their book in front of the class and present how well their fluency for that book has increased. It's a pretty cool strategy. I never knew that that could help fluency either, but it makes perfect sense now!
ReplyDeleteI know, right! And I find it so bizzare that the children actually cooperate and read that much over and over! I bet the children find it rewarding to be so successful in their reading by the end of the week - to kind of "show off"! :)
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