The Fluent Reader

I absolutely love Mr. Rasinski's book,  The Fluent Reader.  Last week I had the opportunity to present a Fluency Session for our literacy professional development.  This is the time of year students fall behind their peers in regards to fluency and independent reading fluency. 

What is Fluency? The ability to read the words in a text with sufficient accuracy, automaticity, and prosody to lead to good comprehension.
This book is a must have for any elementary teacher!  Mr. Rasinski presents the latest research and shares many effective fluency strategies that are easy to integrate in a balanced literacy program.  He also includes a DVD with video samples and many downloads to get you started.  I read the book in just a few days and I was so excited to get a chance to share my findings with our PreK-5 teachers.  
Highlights from the book:
Read Aloud-motivating readers & modeling
Assisted Reading-scaffolding for your developing & struggling readers
Repeated Reading- ways to implement this strategy in fun & engaging ways
  great ideas to use assistants, volunteers, parents, older student tutors
Performance Reading- fun!  poetry, songs, chants, Reader's Theater
   many ideas, and ways to start instantly
Synergy- how to make lessons engaging, fun & powerful
Content Areas- integrate fluency throughout the day in many content areas
Assessment- how to best assess, rubrics, don't over rely on DIBELS! 


Video: Tim Rasinski on teaching reading fluency

Happy Reading! Mrs. Speake

Schema

Schema is the next comprehension strategy our elementary students are learning.  Most readers and teachers know schema as "background knowledge".  Schema is everything in our brains that we have experienced.  All the things I've done, all the places I've been and all the books I've read.  Good readers always use their schema before reading, during reading and after reading.

At South Side we want our readers to know how to use their schema and how to make meaningful connections.  Connections may be text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-world.  With a read aloud, teachers will model how to use schema and make meaningful connections while reading.  Next readers will work with their teacher to make connections and finally they will practice making connections during their independent reading time with their "just right" books.

Some of my favorite text to use for modeling connections are from the author Kevin Henkes.  His stories have characters that children relate to easily and the text is full of rich and engaging vocabulary.  To share a few of his characters..... Chrysanthemum is teased about her long flower name, Lilly is quite a unique individual and takes her purse to school and learns a valuable lesson when she gets in trouble, Wendell is a wild child that "wears" most of his friends out and Chester is best friends with Wilson.  They are "two peas in a pod" doing everything together until Lily moves into the neighborhood.

These books can be read over and over pulling many valuable lessons, rich vocabulary and meaningful connections that help our readers become successful with using comprehension strategies independently.

Reading should always be meaningful and engaging.  Our elementary students (1-5 grades) will hopefully tell you, "making connections and using our schema helps us to better understand the story" !
Happy Reading- Mrs. Speake

Did you say METACOGNITION??

     Yesterday a parent stopped by to share some good news!  Her son came home sharing the new word he learned in Kindergarten - "me ta cog ni tion"!  Of course the parents said - what does this mean??  He slowly said - "thinking about your thinking!"  Woo hoo!

     The elementary students are learning reading comprehension strategies for their developmental level.  Metacognition is the latest buzz word in psychology.  Metacognition enables us to be successful learners, and has been associated with intelligence (e.g., Borkowski, Carr, & Pressley, 1987; Sternberg, 1984, 1986a, 1986b). Metacognition refers to higher order thinking which involves active control over the cognitive (thinking) processes engaged in learning.

      We are teaching the process of good thinking strategies for reading.  Kids know that good readers think about what they are reading.  If we don't engage our brain when we read it is "fake" reading and only "real" reading helps our brain grow!  The thinking strategies we are teaching can carry over to math, science, social studies and writing.  We must engage our brains with everything we do.  Plus young kids love to say big, juicy words.  Its the hook that makes the learning stick.

     Tanny McGregor wrote a wonderful book, Comprehension Connections.  We are  implementing many of her ideas K-5.   Many of the teachers at South Side will readily share -  we are learning right along with the kids and it's exciting.  Raising our expectations and raising our students to be life-long learners.

Is there anything better than picking up a good book and reading?
Happy Reading!   Mrs. Speake

Literacy Kick-Off

Today we launched our literacy kick-off for our Prep Kindergarten-5th grade!  Our school district is in the beginning stages of revising and renewing our balanced literacy programs and aligning this with the Iowa Core and making sure we are teaching 21st century skills.

Our first goal this academic year is to improve our independent reading piece, bringing back our own personal love of reading and sharing this love with our students.  We want to create students who CAN read, WANT to read and CHOOSE to read.  A second goal is reviewing all of the comprehension strategies and making sure these skills are explicitly taught and modeled.

A few highlights:

• Awakening our inner reader & helping our students find the joy in reading:   The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller  
• Leveling & organizing the classroom library (our summertime project) 
• Procedures and routines to help build reading stamina
• Scheduling time into the daily schedule-what can we give up
• What is the latest research regarding independent reading
• Fountas & Pinnell Assessment Benchmark Kits- how will we assess

Together we are going to take small steps (some might say giant leaps)

to strengthen and bring our literacy programs into the 21st century.  I know we will have many moments of great success and times of stress and frustration BUT what is so awesome about our group of teachers is that we are all ready to face this challenge together.  

Happy Reading!! Ronna