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

Formative Assessment

     At South Side we have been studying formative assessment.  Formative assessment allows the teacher to check student’s progress.  (are they getting it, do I need to re-teach or do I need to adjust the pace and so on)

     Our PreK-5 teachers have dedicated a portion of the school day for independent reading time.  We took time to assess where we are with this and what is our next step.  A star is something to celebrate and the stair step means a skill or strategy we need to keep working on.  Using this form in the classroom can allow students to keep track of their own learning and with the teacher’s help they can plan what the next step is. 

    

 We must stop and celebrate our success!  Too often we forget that good things are happening everyday.  Students are reading daily and teachers are sharing their love of reading.  Our reading stamina is growing at each grade level!

Happy Reading!  Ronna 

Stamina

endurance, staying power, tirelessness, fortitude, strength, energy, toughness, determination, tenacity, perseverance, grit.

Stamina is a vocabulary word the elementary students are using when they are reading.  The dictionary defines stamina as the ability to sustain prolonged physical or mental effort.  The K-5 teachers are dedicating a portion of each day encouraging independent reading time which requires the students to build .....stamina.

Students need daily practice to build reading muscles.  Just as athletes need to build their muscles for running or swimming, students need to build their learning muscles.  Reading stamina does not come natural to most children.  Teachers model procedures and routines to establish an environment that encourages on-task reading behaviors.  This takes teacher reading and planning time and daily student practice time.  It also takes oodles and oodles of quality books for the student's reading time.

 The Sisters,  Steven Layne,  Kelly Gallagher and Donalyn Miller are a few of the published authors you can find our teachers reading in their free time which means late at night or on weekends!  :)  Teachers must be life-long learners to enhance their own teaching strategies.  Together we are improving and sharing new ideas to build student’s reading stamina and to help students become life-long readers and learners.  

Its a privilege to be part of a teaching community willing to work hard and learn together!

Happy Learning-Ronna

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