I've been pulling a small group everyday for my inquiry and I've been working with these four students on improving their fluency. So far, I've done one week on phrasing and started teaching expression. I'm hoping by hitting on components that improve fluency their words per minutes will dramatically increase in the end of my study. I will be collecting bi-weekly data to see if their words per minutes are increasing as lessons are taught. After each week of my fluency lessons, I've been reflecting in my inquiry binder. These are my two reflections so far:
This reflection was dated 10/14/14:
Wow! I feel so out of my element! It is a hard skill to teach students such a basic concept. Types of concepts we take for granted. As I was teaching my small group, I felt that since I read with ease, it shouldn't be a hard skill to grasp. I was wrong. I started by explaining that good readers read in phrases and not word by word. I modeled without telling them which was which, choppy (word-by-word) reading then I modeled what reading in phrases sounded like. After I did this, I asked the students to tell me what they heard and explain their thinking. I then had students read silently the phrase strips and asked they read each phrase multiple times until they could say it with fluency. After they got some practice reading phrases, I dismissed them and then wondered if what I just did was effective? Did the students learn something? I felt weak as a teacher and again out of my element. How do I teach all the parts that play into reading with fluency? Can I make my students fluent readers? I sat down with my CT and explained to her that I felt out of my element and wasn't sure if I had given an effective phrasing lesson.
My CT and I said down after school and decided this:
She asked me what do good readers do? This question really got me thinking. I'm not sure because I've just been exposed to "good reading" my whole life, so I wasn't sure how to categorize what good readers do. She told me that for this inquiry, we needed to do some backwards planning. She asked me where do I want my students to be by the end of this? She explained to me that good readers pause for punctuation, they read with expression, read in phrases, they move their fingers or eyes across the page, and they read books, this being the ultimate goal. So we decided these would be the types of lessons we needed to teach. After we discussed this, she and I planned for my fluency lessons for next week. She explained to me that poetry helps students read in phrases because they are written in phrases. We used the book, The Super Book of Phonics Poems, by Linda B. Ross and picked out two poems. I would use one poem on Tuesday and Wednesday and the other poem on Friday and Monday. Once we picked out the poems I was going to use, I typed up phrases from the poems into word, that way my students could practice saying phrases from the poem before being given the actual poem. The first two days they would be reading a poem called Under the Cat's Umbrella and doing this two day plan and then would read Funny Elephants and follow this two day plan.
The plan was to: (Tuesday)
(Wednesday):
Here was my reflection after working with the poems:
Wow! I felt so prepared for my fluency lessons from this week because I sat down with my CT and did some backwards planning of where I want my students to be in the end. After the Tuesday lesson on phrasing, I could start to hear improvements in my student's reading. Instead of reading word by word, the students were showing a lot of effort and really trying hard to read in phrases. Using poems definitely helped practice with phrases because poem's structures are set up in phrases. By allowing the students to practice phrases before reading the poem allowed them to become familiar with lines in the poem. Once they got the poem, the fluency was somewhat there because they had seen the phrases before hand. The lesson ran smoothly and at one point, I even saw one of the students in my group having another student reread phrases they were struggling with and really trying to help her classmate out. One student helping would move her pointer along the lines to help the other student read with fluency. It was amazing watch!
This reflection was dated 10/14/14:
Wow! I feel so out of my element! It is a hard skill to teach students such a basic concept. Types of concepts we take for granted. As I was teaching my small group, I felt that since I read with ease, it shouldn't be a hard skill to grasp. I was wrong. I started by explaining that good readers read in phrases and not word by word. I modeled without telling them which was which, choppy (word-by-word) reading then I modeled what reading in phrases sounded like. After I did this, I asked the students to tell me what they heard and explain their thinking. I then had students read silently the phrase strips and asked they read each phrase multiple times until they could say it with fluency. After they got some practice reading phrases, I dismissed them and then wondered if what I just did was effective? Did the students learn something? I felt weak as a teacher and again out of my element. How do I teach all the parts that play into reading with fluency? Can I make my students fluent readers? I sat down with my CT and explained to her that I felt out of my element and wasn't sure if I had given an effective phrasing lesson.
My CT and I said down after school and decided this:
She asked me what do good readers do? This question really got me thinking. I'm not sure because I've just been exposed to "good reading" my whole life, so I wasn't sure how to categorize what good readers do. She told me that for this inquiry, we needed to do some backwards planning. She asked me where do I want my students to be by the end of this? She explained to me that good readers pause for punctuation, they read with expression, read in phrases, they move their fingers or eyes across the page, and they read books, this being the ultimate goal. So we decided these would be the types of lessons we needed to teach. After we discussed this, she and I planned for my fluency lessons for next week. She explained to me that poetry helps students read in phrases because they are written in phrases. We used the book, The Super Book of Phonics Poems, by Linda B. Ross and picked out two poems. I would use one poem on Tuesday and Wednesday and the other poem on Friday and Monday. Once we picked out the poems I was going to use, I typed up phrases from the poems into word, that way my students could practice saying phrases from the poem before being given the actual poem. The first two days they would be reading a poem called Under the Cat's Umbrella and doing this two day plan and then would read Funny Elephants and follow this two day plan.
The plan was to: (Tuesday)
- Go over (review) fluency and phrasing
- practice phrases- first silently, then with a partner
- have students read the poem silently
- then have them read the poem with a partner, alternating paragraphs…… I told the students to make sure they were checking for their partner's phrasing and to help them improve by asking them to reread a sentence if they needed to do so.
(Wednesday):
- practice phrase silently again- review
- read poem silently again-review
- teach students about voice/expression
- model 2 paragraphs
- have students practice reading the poem silently with expression
- have students share out a paragraph they felt they used great expression in
Here was my reflection after working with the poems:
Wow! I felt so prepared for my fluency lessons from this week because I sat down with my CT and did some backwards planning of where I want my students to be in the end. After the Tuesday lesson on phrasing, I could start to hear improvements in my student's reading. Instead of reading word by word, the students were showing a lot of effort and really trying hard to read in phrases. Using poems definitely helped practice with phrases because poem's structures are set up in phrases. By allowing the students to practice phrases before reading the poem allowed them to become familiar with lines in the poem. Once they got the poem, the fluency was somewhat there because they had seen the phrases before hand. The lesson ran smoothly and at one point, I even saw one of the students in my group having another student reread phrases they were struggling with and really trying to help her classmate out. One student helping would move her pointer along the lines to help the other student read with fluency. It was amazing watch!