Week 7 Post

After reading the Tompkins chapter on fluency, I have learned how important it is for students to be fluent readers and writers.  In order for students to understand and comprehend the text, they need to be reading fluently, otherwise they will be focusing on how to read particular words, and not the meaning of the text.  As future teachers, it is important for us to include activities that promote fluency in both reading and writing.  In one of the first days of class, we did choral readings with our small groups.  As Tompkins mentions in the chapter, students become increasingly fluent readers as they read and reread text aloud.  The chapter also talks about high-frequency words, which are the most common words used in reading and writing.  Some of these words are difficult to sound out, like could for example, so it's important for students to memorize these words to help their fluency.  Many teachers use word walls to display these high-frequency words so the students become familiar with them.  My CT has a word wall on top of the chalkboard and he changes it every few weeks.  As you all know, I'm in a third grade classroom, so the word wall does not contain high-frequency words, it has "better" words for the students to use.  For example, my CT has big being the "boring" word, and has humongous, colossal, enormous, etc... next to big so the students can choose a more interesting word to use in their stories.

To become a more fluent reader, students can do repeated readings where they practice rereading a book or chapter of a book a few times while trying to improve their reading speed.  Students also need to practice reading books to improve their fluency.  If students read every night as part of a homework assignment, this will help their reading fluency.  It's important for students to read outside of school so they have practice finding the meanings of words on their own, since a teacher will not always be there to help, and to improve their reading skills.