The Reading Strategies Book Online Book Club: Chapter 4

I am so excited to have guest, Christy Mattison, facilitating and sharing information on Goal 4!!!  Please be sure to respond to Goal 4 in the comments section below.

Goal 4: Teaching Fluency Reading with Phrasing, Intonation, and Automaticity

 This goal is all about fluency! One "ah ha moment" that I had was that it is possible to be a fluent reader and not comprehend. I love this quote, “It’s important that in our attempts to teach children to read fluently, we don’t send the message that reading is just about performing.” I think we often time tell students to read it smooth, but are we prompting them to read it smooth and understand it? 

I liked the breakdown of the parts of reading fluency.  I feel like I need to focus more on expression and emphasis.   I think my “go to” prompts are always for phrasing, automaticity, and pace.

I also liked that she clarifies that students working in levels A-C will not be reading fluently. She suggests beginning to look for pacing around level D, phrasing and intonation in levels E-G.

She cautioned getting students to read with stop watches. This made me think about our Dibels measures and how they focus on “fluency”. 

She recommends documenting fluency during a running record.  (mark pauses with a slash mark)

Here are some of the lessons that I really liked:

Partners Help to Smooth it Out

I love the idea of being a “ghost partner”. Many students do not know how to give positive feedback. This way the teacher can help guide students’ language when giving feedback. 

Warm-Up Phrases

This made me think about something that our CARE teachers shared with me from a Jenn Jones conference. After students have mastered reading one word fast, she moves to phrases. They use index cards, punch 2 holes in the cards, and flip through the cards while the student reads them.  Here is an example of some possible phrases. 

So, when thinking about fluency, what ways do you help students with fluency?

The Reading Strategies Book Online Book Club: Chapter 3

I am so excited to have guest, Lindsay Pahe, facilitating and sharing information on Goal 3!!!  Please be sure to respond to Goal 3 in the comments section following her post.

Goal 3: Supporting Print Work

I have to say that this has been my favorite goal so far. Maybe because I’m a running record nerd who loves taking them, analyzing them, and using them to teach my students based on their specific needs. Maybe it’s because I’m so passionate about trying to get other teachers to see how important this is and what a difference it can make for our young readers!!! Maybe it’s because I felt like she was speaking my language with terms like self-extending system, running records, cross checking, and three sources of information. On top of that she is continuously referring to Clay’s work, which lets me know this author is one smart chick. Yes, I do believe that makes me a literacy nerd!!

This goal starts out by stating what we all know to be true: “In order to construct accurate meaning from a text, children need to read words correctly, integrating 3 sources of information: meaning, syntax, and visual. We all know that just how IMPORTANT it is for our readers. I sometimes get frustrated with other folks who don’t put enough emphasis on something that is so basic, yet so IMPORTANT.

Jennifer goes on to say “Sometimes, as children are learning to read, they overemphasize on one or two of the sources of information or use each inconsistently. This affects their accuracy rate and often ultimately limits their comprehension of the text”. I think we all see this when we are using one of the sources as part of a teaching prompt. It’s easy to get caught up in “makes sense, makes sense, makes sense” and forget to emphasize “makes sense AND looks right”. Our students then become more focused on the source that we are emphasizing and this results in the overemphasis of one or two of the sources. Reading this sentence confirms what we already know but also reminds us how important it is to emphasize a balance for our students so that they will use all three sources together and independently. It also reminds us that in order for our students to reach the ultimate goal of reading (comprehension) we must emphasize all 3 sources equally.  I love how she refers to it as juggling 3 balls in the air. How true is that – if you are juggling you are always using ALL of them and you can’t stop to just use one.

Serravallo also points out that the strategies in this chapter are best taught in combination with a systematic word study/phonics program and reiterates that “isolated phonics skill work without the application in books is show to be of limited effectiveness”. Again, a reminder that balance is key.

 While I could go on and on probably about most strategies in this chapter I will try to limit myself to 2. 

The first one I will talk about is 3.1: Check the Picture for Help. 

I think this is something we all encourage our students to do when we tell them to check their picture first and then keep their eyes on the words. What stood out to me here was that Serravallo really limited checking the picture for help to 2 levels: A and B. She says that “for children reading at level C and beyond, this is an important strategy to balance with explicit strategies to decode the print”. I think that it is important for us to remember that some strategies are a better fit for certain levels and in this particular example, starting at Level C students need to do more than just check the picture to be successful.

I think what I love most about 3.10: Juggle all Three Balls is the chart provided.

 I’m definitely going to create an anchor chart just like this. I love the language here where Jennifer says “When you get to a tricky word you don’t know, it’s important that you do more than just try to sound the word out”. Exactly! You have to be thinking about what makes sense, sounds right, and looks right – WAAAAYY more effective!!

QUESTION: So, as you were reading this chapter what really got you excited?? What specific lesson language and/or prompts did you read about that you can try to incorporate more effectively?