Comprehension and Fluency

Comprehension and fluency go hand in hand with each other. Comprehension focuses on understanding the story and the meaning behind the words, the structure, the content etc. Students have to learn to question and analyze what they are reading. Fluency focuses on beginning to decode sounds and recognize words automatically. The more students are able to decode words and start to recognize letters and words automatically, it will help students to comprehend what they are reading. According to Timothy Rasinski, "readers must be able to decode words correctly and effortlessly (automaticity) and then put them together into meaningful phrases with the appropriate expression to make sense of what they read" (1). When reading to students, it is important that you stop to ask questions and to have students make sense of what you are reading to them. This helps students to understand what is being read and the content. It is also important that you teach comprehension strategies so that students begin to do them automatically once they start reading on their own. It is also difficult for students to start to comprehend on their own when students are decoding words so slowly. If students take 10 minutes to decode one word, it is going to be difficult for them to remember what it is they were reading and what it was about. It is also important that reading is taking place within the classroom. Read Aloud's, reading workshop, and other reading activities expose students to books and comprehension strategies so that both fluency can start occurring as well as strategies for students to help understand what they are reading.

 In my classroom, we teach fluency by reading the alphabet chart daily. We focus on different concepts within the alphabet chart. We also help students by working on letter identification as well as including words that students already know or words that we use over and over again. These words will help students to feel confident in their reading and will be words that they already have begun to know automatically. We also use anecdotal records to help us informally learn what students know and are still learning. Each week, we start to include more parts of literacy to teach with fluency, and we increase the speed we teach it at or the speed at which we ask students to respond. We tell students about how we notice that they are starting to automatically look at the first sound and think about the word that it might be. We encourage this type of learning so that students continue becoming excited about reading and hearing those sounds. The more accessible that students are to learning and practicing, the more fluent they will become.

To understand my students reading development, it is important to look at the beginning assessments that were taken at the beginning of the year. It is also important to think about the context that it was given in. Students all learn differently and it is important that we learn more about our children so that we can help them in a way that best suites their learning style if possible. We also need to have students feeling comfortable with us as teachers because they have to feel safe and comfortable to learn in our community. We also learn a lot through informal assessments as students are being asked questions through read aloud's and other activities done throughout the day. Conferencing with students is also important because you can get a feel on how comfortable students feel with reading. You also can see if there is something they like to read that may start students in a direction where they are more motivated to learn.