Group+9+Module+7

1. What does research say about the topic? SUSANNAH: Repeated and monitored oral reading improves reading fluency and overall reading achievement. There is no research to confirm that instructional time spent on silent, independent reading inproves fluency. At best, there is probably "more beneficial ways to spend reading instructional time.

PEGGY: The text states, " repeated reading practice produces statistically significant improvement in reading speed, word recognition, and oral reading expression on the practiced passages"

RENEE: Research suggest that: :one of the major differences in poor readers and good readers is the difference in the total amount of time they read. Students who needed the most practice in reading spent the least amount of time reading."

SUSANNAH: I agree with that! The kids spend all of their time doing Focus and Buckle down books. I think I can stand my ground with this new principal, and the time I get with kids will not be focus and buckledown books.

MANDY: The text talks about the importance of reading. The actual amount of time spent reading shows that those who read more read better.  2. Rank order the following fluency, comprehension and vocabulary in importance in the reading process. Give reasons for the ranking. SUSANNAH: How about vocabulary, fluency and comprehension, because the better your vocabuly, the more fluent your reading, so the better your comprehension?

PEGGY: I would rank vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency. Really all are important, but if the reader does not know the meaning of a word their comprehension can be inaccurate. I see this when testing special ed. studdents with the KTEA. One wrong vocabulary word or defined word and the comprehension changes. SUSANNAH: Ok, I see what you mean, in which case, maybe comprehension comes first because, really, a good vocabulary and fluency is worthless without compehansion. RENEE: So I guess it is which came first the chicken or the egg. I would rank them: Vocabulary, fluency and comprehension because students first have to be able to read the word, then if the student takes too much time sounding out a word it is hard to comprehend with she has read. So fluency then comprehension skills. SUSANNAH: That is probably the point of this question for us - that all three are interconnected and interoven, and unlike phonics and phonemes (that have a systematic and sequential order)- there is not an order, but a cycle loop, and each reinforces and is critical to the other's success. MANDY: I would rank comprehenion, vocabulary, and fluency. I think the most important thing is for students to comprehend what they read.

3. The NPR is different from the textbook in the fluency matter….Why? Which position do you like better and why? SUSANNAH: Well, they both agree that you need good recognition decoding skills and good comprehension to be a fluent reader. The difference between fluency and automaticity is clear in NPR, but not in the textbook. The text mentions "divide and conquer" byt NPR does not. Text has stages in fluency... The text says that repeated reading of individual often does not transfer over to fluency with other texts. I agree. That is why Reader's theater is so good. So, what are the two positions? I don;t understand what this quuestion is talkig about. Anyone else?

PEGGY: I can't get the pdf's nor the NPR article to come up on the external links. The NPR is only 3 paragraphs long not 10 pages. Anyone else having trouble or is it just me?

RENEE: I agree with the text suggestion that repeated reading helps build fluency skills in readers.
 * Who wrote this?** I have the actual **NPR** (National Public Radio) (National Percentile Ranking?)book. Dr. Swanson gave it to me last year - she came across some free extra copies.

MANDY: I think this kind of goes back to question number one. The students need to read, read, read!

SUSANNAH;s question:Has anyone else explicitly taught fluency strategies in their classroom? What do you like best? I am going to try to use fluency strategies explicitly next year.

PEGGY: Unless you consider Readers Theatre a fluency strategy, no, but I would be interesting any suggestions. I use repeated readings and a lot of modeling to teach fluency.

RENEE: A successful stretagy at my school is to have an older student read to a younger student. A 4th grade student would read to a 2nd grade student (book on 2nd grade level.) Since the student is familiar with the vocabulary he can focus on his fluency skills. I know this is not new, but sometimes we forget about it.

MANDY: No, most of the kids I have worked with cant really read well.

SUSANNAH: I had my fourth graders write their own short inferences. Basically, I tell them that inferencing is "what happened?" or "what was he/she thinking?". I give them about 10 examples and then set them up to make up inferences in a group for another group to inference. They can be super easy to start with. For example, Josie woke up, looked out the window and saw a white wonderland. What happened? (It snowed last night). After the storm, Jim looked outside and his neighbor's house was gone. What happened? (there was a tornado). Sarah went to visit her Dad. When she got home she smiled, holding something behind her back and said excitedly,"Guess what I got?" Did she have a good visit? (yes. she was excited). What did she probably have behind her back? (A birthday present). And so on. One group tries to make it hard for the other group, so then we have discussions about what kinds of situations are more difficult or easy to inference, and why, and what is fair and reasonable when writing something to be inferenced.
 * PEGGY'S QUESTION: What are some strategies you use to build inferencing when students comprehension is weak?**

RENEE: Remind students that some questions come from the book and some questions come from their heads. Like Susannah said, model inferencing with the class by giving them several examples. I also believe that the students background knowledge on the subject helps or hurts.


 * RENEE's QUESTION: I have had students tell me that their regular education teacher told them to read the questions first then read the text. This seems to be okay for the 4th and 5th grade students on IEP's I work with but, it seems to confuse the younger students. DO you think this is a good strategy for reading comprehension skills? If so, what age do you feel is appropriate for it?**

PEGGY: I don't like to see students get in the habit of reading the questions before the text. To often they just look for how to answer the question and don't read the entire text. Bad habits form and by high school they are not reading at all and just searching for answers. I don't there is any age that is good for just looking for the answers. I think we are, because of time constrants, being put into the same position in these classes. Short time frames causes pressure to answer quickly, so just look for the answer. Pressure to cover so much material in a certain time frame does the same thing. Our world, our society moves too fast. RENEE: Peggy thank you for your comment. I agree with you, I think the students should resd the text first then the question then go back to the text if needed. SUSANNAH: Peggy, you are sooo right! And you know what, since my ADHD kids can't scan (ADHD means that you cannot prioritize or "pick out" the answer from text for information), they have to read the questions, go back and read the text, then read the questions again. Since ADHD kids have terrible short term memory, they cannot remember the questions they read the first time. I am seriously thinking of changing my capstone (which I am doing in Spring 2011) to "How to teach these reading strategies so that your students are not "left in the dust" and homicidal." Because of the structure of this class, I (ADHD Susannah Henson) have gotten little out of it and am feeling very resentful.

Peggy: Hang in there Susannah, you'll be okay. But pressure, time frames do play a part in our students learning.

SUSANNAH: That is true - for me too, but I think that not being able to interact with the teachers is hard for me - I think just seeing them once a week relieves a lot of stress for me. MANDY: I don't think that this is a good strategy to use. I teaches the kids to just look for the questions that they read. Not all the other important material in the text.

MANDY: My question is how do you get your student's to understand the importance of comprehension because to me this is the most important aspect of reading?
 * PEGGY:** I try to relate to their comprehension of something they understand by using questioning until they arrive or are able to relate that everything they do involves comprehension, not just reading.