Fluency

Fluency is an important component of reading. Some students read fluently and with expression, which shows some understanding of the the text. There are also some students who struggle to read fluently, stumble over words, and sometimes even lose their place on the page. I noticed my students who are not fluent readers often do not understand what they're reading as well as my fluent readers because they're caught up with trying to read each word and so their reading is choppy and comprehension is lost in the process. As a new teacher, I am always trying to find different ways to help my students excel at reading. Fortunately, there are great resources available online and I wanted to share some things I found. 

• Danielle Mahoney's blog on Scholastic offers some great suggestions of how to improve fluency. I liked how she provided information on the seven basic principles of good fluency instruction, which are word accuracy, modeling, supported reading, repeated reading, phrased reading, text difficulty, and synergy. Be sure to check out the site for details on those seven principles! She also did another blog on fluency where she provided lovely example of her fluency bookmark.
• Alyssa Zelkowitz' fluency posters, which I thought were very creative and cannot wait to use them in my classroom! Her posters include the Cheatin’ Cheetah (for reading too quickly, without care for comprehension); the Just-Right Rabbit (you can hear "just right" with your ears; you'll be hopping along at the appropriate pace); Word-Ending Elephant (good readers never forget to look at the ends of words); and Pointer Penguin (Pointer Penguin reminds us to push our fingers along with the words, as though they're skating on ice). LOVE IT!
• Amanda Nickerson's blog: She has great ideas using fluency folders to have students become more fluent readers. I will have to try this another year.

As you can see, there is an abundance of resources available to use at our fingertips. It's just a matter of finding what you would like to use and adapting it to meet the needs of your students.