Fluency!

I have learned a lot about fluency in my teaching classes over the years. It has been strongly brought to my attention how important it is in a child's writing and language development. It is a huge determiner for reading and can help carry children across the grades. In Millers article it talks about the importance of Talking Aloud. This strategy I feel is extremely beneficial to both the students and the teacher. Miller on page 3 talks about how planning, authenticity, and precise language truly matter and give students a valuable reading lesson. This allows teachers to think about what the story/language offers students, if it gives authentic data to real life, and help them reach further vocabulary. This strategy of "thinking aloud" would help students with accuracy and prosody. This is because it, like Miller says-"builds a framework". Teachers can ask students to point to words and text to build further ideas and think about how the text connects to real life or them. Therefore, they're learning to accurate way to see into the text and structure of how the story works. Students will talk about the "precise language" and build accurate vocabulary and accurate ideas about the text as a whole. I think this strategy is get because it incorporates comprehension as well and building a schema to how they view a story or text. This article also talked about text-to-text and text-to-self. Which are very important aspect that connect to fluency that teachers/adults overlook at times. In the Neuflued article, I found it interesting how valuable comprehension strategies were when thinking about fluency. When you think about it, it is so true how much thinking about the text before, during, and after can pertain to a child's reading speed. Fluency is all about how a student gets through the text with an easy flow, precise rhythm, and this comes from how they understand and make sense of the text. When children are exposed to sight words, vocabulary, and much practice all the components of fluency work together to help them achieve their language development/fluency. Neuflued mentions the strategy of teaching self regulated use (page 8). This is a independent task on the students and requires them to have a growing repertoire, understand flexibility, and think about the strategies to make them an independent reading. This strategy stresses a lot of practice. When a student practices reading and stops to think about what they're reading they are building on their fluency. I have learned about all the connections comprehension, practice, modeling, and thinking aloud have connected to accuracy, reading speed, and prosody...but never really put together how much they influence each other and build on several main components of fluency!

In my field placement there is a lot..A LOT..of stress on reading. They do the daily 5 now which has several language components related to the growth of reading in a child. My MT makes it a fun process but makes sure the job is done. She incorporates spelling words that relate to text..have them think about the words they read...and ask comprehension questions before and after. These strategies she used allows the students to work on their fluency and become sufficient readers! During their reading time with the teacher, the students also hold smilely sticks to point to each word as they read. If they can't get through a word she has them stop and sound out the word. She reminds them of their word songs and phoneme segmentation. I think this is a huge help for students and their reading fluency. They do phoneme segmentation every morning and sound out the words of the week and MANY words they have already practiced! My MT has encouraged me to do the same in my classroom because it has helped with their fluency and all three (prosody, reading speed, and accuracy) in reading the text!