Teaching Methods and Reading Fluency

The reading fluency plan entails the following;

The model of fluent reading

Students are advised to hear and comprehend the sounds. With the proper comprehension of the sounds, they can transfer the experiences into their reading. Teachers should read aloud to their students with great expressions. They should also avail a variety of genres like poetry, excerpts from speeches and folk tales with lyrical language to their students, so as to capture their interests and make them enjoy the exercise of reading (Gunning, 2005).

Often teachers should ask their students questions like; what entails a good reader? Let them share their views and thoughts.

Performance of repeated readings in class

Repeated reading assists students to recognize the words with high frequency that strengthens their reading capability. Teachers’ should encourage students to read short passages loudly to promote their reading fluency. For instance, choose a short poem and make a copy for each student. The teacher should then read the poem loudly while students listen and follow closely. Then engage a discussion with them on reading behavior like rate, intonation and phrasing. The teacher should then engage students in echo reading where he reads and students follow after him (Hannah, 1994).

Promotion of phrased reading in class

Fluency is higher when reading phrases seamlessly than reading word by word. Select a poem, convert its sentences into strips which can act as cue cards to enable students to see how clustering of portions of texts is good as compared to saying word by word separately. Then you can hold up the strips one by one to have the students read the sentences together. Later, reinforce the reading by using the same article by pointing to the poem and reading as a class.

Hire tutors to assist out

You can ask some people like tutors or older students to support the non-fluent students. They can read the prior selected text loudly at once. This session is encouraged to be short of about 15 minutes to avoid boredom. It is also wise to provide a plan of your next lesson to the tutor so as to prepare the non-fluent students for the next lesson (Gunning, 2005).

Trying a readers theatre in class

This is an oral performance of something like a script. It is aimed at promoting fluency in reading. The exercise is delivered through intonation and exercise and the focus is on interpreting the script and not memorizing it. This can be done by providing each student with a script and reading it loud to them and then echo reading and lastly choral reading. Once contended with the practice, pick a few students to read various parts of the script. Then dress in costumes and perform in front of teachers and students from other classes.

After reading, let the students state their names and the parts they read. It is also important to record the performance so that the students can see themselves later and believe in their fluency.

Without fluency in reading, readers will be forced to dedicate a lot of time to decipher; hence they will lack enough time and energy to reflect on the meaning of the script. This fluency reading plan will enable readers to decipher each word’s phonics and create meaning of each phrase. This is due to fluent and accurate reading (Gunning, 2005).

The rationale of the above strategies

Model reading enables students to understand fluent reading sounds and it also exposes students to a wide range of reading materials, various genres and writing styles. Repeated reading helps students to acquire recognition skills of words and it should be done progressively to keep on improving the fluency of the students in reading. Sustained silent reading separates the students from the larger group to individuals. Scripts encourage students to read expressively as they do it in front of others who are the audience. Choral reading enables students to focus on the flow of words in the passage as well as intonation because quite often they spend less time to decode (Labbo & Teale, 1990).

 

References

Gunning, T.G. (2005).Creating literacy instruction for all students (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon.

Hannah, A.M. (1994). The effects of repeated readings on the reading fluency and comprehension of second-grade, Chapter I students. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Delaware.

Labbo, L. D., & Teale, W. H. (1990). Cross age reading: A strategy for helping poor readers. The Reading Teacher, 43, 363-369.