Fluency and Guided Reading
For the past two years, our district has been easing into a guided reading model for reading instruction. It began as a lower grade focus, in grades 1 & 2 and quickly swept up into the upper grades. I haven’t really participated with a whole heart, if you know what I mean in teacher speak. In fourth and fifth grades, for the past ten years now, a focus on fluency has made a dramatic difference in my students’ reading scores. I worked hard on SSR by making my students find books they loved and partner reading until they found the thrill of a great book. Using the reading strategies from Stephanie Harvey in my teacher directed reading seemed enough. I didn’t really feel like I needed to rearrange my focus again, to take time away from what was already effective to try a new tactic.
Then I went to hear Fountas and Pinnell in March. They convinced me. After seeing the videos of students in the reading groups, I understood the power of having students spend a few hours a week with a teacher doing the same types of “Harvey” strategies, but on a leveled text that held both challenge and success.
So where did the focus on fluency fit?
In the first hour of the workshop, one of the presenters (I’m still not sure which one is which) said the word “fluency” 26 times. I tallied it. The goal was for students to reach fluency in a true sense – using appropriate expression, prosody, and interpretation of a text with a smooth rate of reading that sounded like real speaking. But the progress up the levels seemed slow in order to have each student reading on that level and to be able to master the reading skills / strategies that were required.
Now if the instruction at each level is cumulative, wouldn’t we want a fifth grader who is at level L to get to T as quickly as possible so that we can teach him / her at grade level, including all of the comprehension strategies appropriate for success? And if we are using a focus on fluency (not a “Dibels style speed read” but authentically improving fluency), wouldn’t it be a perfect marriage? To take our children to a higher level more efficiently and then to teach them at that level?
I am absolutely convinced we have our “reading remediation coffers” full of students who are “lazy readers” – readers who have simply not had a kick in the pants to read with energy and interpretation. And these readers are bogging down our remediation efforts with those students who need more tactical intervention… students who have phonetic issues or an ELL barrier. I would like to see those guided reading leveled groups containing children who are actually at the level instead of bogged down with students who simply have not had the fluency KICK!
–Lorraine Griffith
Tags: Fluency, Guided Reading