Goal 4 Teaching Fluency Reading with Phrasing, Intonation, and Automaticity • Why is this goal important? Some argue there is a chicken-and-egg relationship between fluency and comprehension. By reading at an appropriate pace, with proper phrasing and with intonation, expression, and emphasis on the correct words, a reader both communicates that the text is making sense and makes sense of the reading (Rasinski 2010, Kuhn 2008). Try to read a text in a staccato, word-by-word, monotone fashion and you will soon discover you understood and remember very few if any of the words you said aloud. There are exceptions to this rule of fluency and comprehension being inextricably linked. Have you ever met that child who reads a text sounding like he is reading lines for a Broadway audition, only to stop, be asked a simple question about what he just read, and have him tell you he doesn’t remember a thing? It’s important that in our attempts to teach children to read fluently, we don’t send the message that reading is just about performing. 104 THE READING STRATEGIES BOOK 104 For more information about this Heinemann resource, visit www.heinemann.com/readingstrategiesbook/ serravallo book.indb 104 4/12/15 8:10 PM There are a few parts to this goal of reading fluency: •phrasing or parsing—putting words together into meaningful groups within a sentence •expression or intonation or prosody—reading to match the feeling of the piece, paying attention to ending punctuation and dialogue marks •emphasis—emphasizing words in the sentence to match the author’s meaning; paying attention to text treatments (for example: bold, italics, or all caps) •automaticity—reading known words automatically •pace—reading at a pace that mirrors how we talk, not racing through words or reading at a labored rate. • How do I know if this goal is right for my student? We wouldn’t expect readers at the lowest levels (A, B, C) to read with fluency, as their focus should be on one-to-one matching (reading one word aloud for each word in print) and pointing under the words—reading smoothly and this goal cannot live side by side. However, by level D, we should expect some phrasing, with a couple or a few words in each phrase, and by level E, we should expect some intonation as well. At levels E, F, and G, it’s appropriate to help students practice their fluency, though we may not expect perfect fluency as students are still learning to integrate sources of information and work on their print work strategies (see Chapter 3; Joseph Yukish, personal communication, 2014). I’m not a fan of determining fluency as a goal by holding up a stopwatch as kids read because I believe that children often start to view reading aloud as performance and they stop monitoring for meaning, invalidating the assessment overall, or they feel pressured and the results are skewed by their anxiety. In most cases, if phrasing is appropriate, the pace will be too. So instead of a stopwatch, I think you can listen as students read aloud for a running record, and record their pauses (as slash marks where the pauses occur) and instances of expressive reading (by annotating). You can then go back to evaluate the number of words in a phrase group, where the pauses were and whether they were syntactically appropriate, and how often the reader paid attention to punctuation. See the sample record of oral reading in Figure 4.A. For more information about taking fluency records, see either The Literacy Teacher’s Playbook or Independent Reading Assessment series (Serravallo). Teaching Fluency 105 For more information about this Heinemann resource, visit www.heinemann.com/readingstrategiesbook/ serravallo book.indb 105 4/12/15 8:10 PM Figure 4.A A record of one student’s reading fluency. Pauses are indicated by slashes (/) and notations about expression are in the margins. According to this, I would say the student could work on lengthening her phrases and being more consistent about attending to ending punctuation to inform intonation and expression. 106 THE READING STRATEGIES BOOK For more information about this Heinemann resource, visit www.heinemann.com/readingstrategiesbook/ serravallo book.indb 106 4/12/15 8:10 PM Strategies for Reading with Fluency at a Glance Strategy Levels Genres/ Text Types Skills 4.1 Read It Like You’ve Always Known It Any Any Automaticity 4.2 Think, “Have I Seen It on the Word Wall?” Any (although words would change based on level) Any Automaticity 4.3 Use a “This Is Interesting” Voice D and above Nonfiction Intonation, expression 4.4 Make the Bumpy Smooth D–J Any Phrasing 4.5 Say Good-Bye to Robot Reading D and above Any Phrasing 4.6 Punctuation at the End of a Sentence D and above Any Intonation, expression 4.7 Warm-Up and Transfer D and above Any Phrasing and/or intonation 4.8 Punctuation Inside a Sentence E and above Any Phrasing 4.9 Partners Help to Smooth It Out E–J Any Phrasing 4.10 Inside Quotes and Outside Quotes E and above Fiction Intonation, expression 4.11 Make Your Voice Match the Feeling E and above Fiction Intonation, expression 4.12 Phonics Phone for Fluency Feedback E and above Any Phrasing 4.13 Make Your Voice Match the Meaning E and above Any Phrasing, intonation 4.14 Get Your Eyes Ahead of the Words E and above Any Phrasing 4.15 Warm-Up Phrases F and above Any Phrasing 4.16 Read Like a Storyteller F and above Narrative Intonation, expression 4.17 Push Your Eyes J/K (or any book where the sentences are broken up across lines) Fiction (mostly early chapter books) Phrasing 4.18 Partners Can Be Fluency Teachers J and above Any Phrasing, intonation, partnership 4.19 Snap to the Next Line J and above Any Phrasing 4.20 Make the Pause Match the Meaning M and above Any Phrasing 4.21 Read It How the Author Tells You (Tags) M and above Fiction Intonation, expression Teaching Fluency 107 For more information about this Heinemann resource, visit www.heinemann.com/readingstrategiesbook/ serravallo book.indb 107 4/12/15 8:10 PM 4.13 Make Your Voice Match the Meaning Who is this for? Levels E and above Genre / Text Type any skill Decoding, using Structure as a Source skill of Information phrasing, intonation Strategy It’s important that when you’re practicing reading smoothly, you are focused on what’s happening, what you’re learning about, or the meaning the author is trying to get across. Depending on the type of text, and the topic, you may change your voice. Have a voice in your head saying, “What’s this about?” and make sure your reading matches the meaning. Teaching Tip The lesson that follows is an example of noticing character emotions to match intonation and expression. This lesson can also be modified to work with other genres. For example, the way it sounds when a person reads nonfiction might be to read it in a, “Whoa! I never knew that!” kind of voice. You could teach a lesson where you show examples of you reading a persuasive piece and a narrative piece and discuss together how your intonation sounds different based on the genre. You will notice that some of the Prompts may work better for narratives, while others will work best for informational texts. Lesson Language Remember the other day when we were reading this big book, The Little Red Hen (Parkes and Smith 1989), together? We were all reading the page that said, “Then I’ll plant it myself, said the Little Red Hen.” At first we read it sort of ho-hum. Like, no big deal, I’ll just go ahead and plant it. Then we realized—wait. She probably wouldn’t be calm about it. She’s probably getting really annoyed! All of these people turn her down when she asks for help. Then we went back to read it in an annoyed, frustrated—grrrrrr!—kind of tone. And then instead of reading it like this (Read in a calm voice.), we read it like this (Read in annoyed voice.). That change in how we read it really matched the meaning. That’s what I want you to be thinking about when you’re reading your books. Make sure that the way you read it really matches what’s happening. Prompts •What’s happening now? •What kind of text is this? Show me how you’d read that. •Does your voice match that? •Did how you read that make sense with the story? •Think about what’s happening in the story. •I could tell you were thinking about the kind of text this was. •I can tell you were thinking about how the character felt here. •The way you read it matched the story! 120 Top text excerpt from Horrible Harry in Room 2B (Kline 1997). Bottom text excerpt from Playing with Poems (White 2008). THE READING STRATEGIES BOOK For more information about this Heinemann resource, visit www.heinemann.com/readingstrategiesbook/ serravallo book.indb 120 4/12/15 8:10 PM
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