Fluent Readers

http://www.readingresource.net/readingfluencyactivities.html

Developing fluency while reading is an extremely important task for teachers. I was interested to see that comprehension was included in the definition of fluency in the Deeney article. She explained fluency as having four components: accuracy, rate, prosody, and comprehension. I like this word added to the definition because comprehension is important to reading. If students are reading faster just to please their teachers and make the grade, they usually aren't understanding any of the text they are reading. We all wanted to be the fastest reader of the class! 

I disagree with a reference from this particular article. On page 442, Deeney references Torgesen (2000) who says that the only accurate measure we can get on fluency is when we measure rate or accuracy. Why can't prosody be measured along with this? Or comprehension too? If fluency encompasses all these components, then why don't assessments of fluency focus more on all the components?

Another thing I did not like was in the Creating Fluent Readers article. In the 'comments teachers have made while coaching' section, the first bullet sounds like a negative, discouraging comment. I think a teacher could turn this around into a more positive statement without putting the student down. Instead of telling a student they read "too fast" and telling them they were too hard to follow, I would focus on telling them what they could do to improve their reading. 

The link provided above has a variety of activities to use with children. The website says they are activities for children with dyslexia, but some look familiar and I believe they could be used with any type of reader.