Teaching Adults to Read: Fluency

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Teaching Adults to Read Fluency

• 2008 Minnesota Summer Institute
• August 6, 2008

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Sponsored by the National Institute for Literacy
www.nifl.gov

• Facilitated by
• Kathy St. John
• katlit2003_at_yahoo.com
• Kaye Beall
• kaye_beall_at_worlded.org

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Workshop Objectives

• By the end of the workshop, participants will
  have
• Defined fluency
• Explored the findings and the implications of
  reading research for fluency
• Used tools for assessing reading skills in
  fluency
• Demonstrated effective strategies for teaching
  fluency

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Fluency

• Research
• Assessment
• Instruction

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Fluency
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What is Fluency?

• The ability to read smoothly and with expression,
  at an adequate rate, without making errors in
  pronunciation.

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The Three Aspects of Fluent Reading

• Speed
• Accuracy in word identification
• Phrasing and expression (prosody)

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Findings Fluency

• Research
• Fluency can be taught to adults.
• Teaching fluency increases reading achievement.
• Strategies for fluency instruction include
  repeated oral readings of text to improve
  accuracy, rate, and rhythm.

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Findings Fluency (continued)

• Research
• Practice Teach fluency using repeated readings.
• Effective K12 strategy guided repeated oral
  reading
• Also useful for those with reading problems
• Motivational (leads to quick success)

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Why is Fluency Important?

• Fluency is required for comprehension. Accurate
  and efficient word identification allows the
  reader to pay attention to meaning.
• Fluent reading is comprehensible because it
  sounds like speech.

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Who Needs Fluency Instruction?

• Most adult beginning readers and many others

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Assessment of Fluency
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Fluency Assessment

• Mastery vs. Automaticity
• Mastery the ability to perform a skill reliably
  without obvious deliberate effort but with some
  obvious conscious application of underlying
  skills needed to accomplish a task
• Automaticity the ability to perform a skill with
  ease, accuracy and speed and without the
  conscious application of underlying skills needed
  to accomplish a task

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Fluency Assessment (continued)

• Oral Reading Rate
• Why do we need to measure oral reading rate? It
  is a measure of word recognition automaticity. It
  is the first step in an informal assessment of
  fluency.

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Fluency Assessment (continued)

• Oral Reading Rate
• How do we measure reading rate? words
  per minute (number of words in passage
  reading time (in seconds) x 60

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Oral Reading Rate Formula Practice

• It was on a dreary night of November that I
  beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an
  anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I
  collected the instruments of life around me, that
  I might now infuse a spark of being into the
  lifeless thing that lay at my feet
• 100 wpm 200 wpm 250 wpm 300 wpm
• Frankenstein from Diagnostic Assessments of
  Reading (1992). Riverside Itasca Oral Reading
  passage, Level 8

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Rapid Automatized Naming

• a s d p a o s p d
• d a p d o a p s o
• o s a s d p o d a
• s p o d s a s o p
• a d p a p o a p s
• /lt18.9 seconds not a processing problem 21.3
  borderline disabled 26.3 disabled
• Felton, R.H., Naylor, Cecile E., Wood, F. B.
  1990. Neuropsychological profile of adult
  dyslexics. Brain and Language, 39, 485497.

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Fluency Assessment (continued)

• Reading Accuracy
• Are words read correctly?
• Does the reader pay attention to the punctuation?

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Scoring Oral Reading Accuracy

• Real Errors
• Mispronunciationscount only first time the error
  is made
• Substitutions
• Insertions
• Omissions
• Supplied words

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Scoring Oral Reading Accuracy (continued)

• Not Real Errors
• Self-corrections
• Repetitions
• Errors in word endings ing, ed, s
• Pronunciation errors in proper nouns

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Assessing Oral Reading Accuracy

• A type of drawing of a person that we often see
  in newspapers is a caricature. A caricature
  portrays someone so that he or she can be
  recognized, but looks peculiar or funny. Usually
  the people who are drawn are famous politicians
  or public figures.
• Caricature from Diagnostic Assessments of
  Reading, (1992). Riverside Itasca Oral Reading
  passage, Level 5

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Assessing Oral Reading Accuracy (continued)

• A type of drawing of a person that we often see
  in a newspapers is a caricatures. A caricatures
  1 portrays someone so that he or she can be
  recognized, but looked peculiar or funny. Usually
  the people who are drawn are (famous) funny
  political or public figures. 1
• Caricature from Diagnostic Assessments of
  Reading, (1992). Riverside Itasca Oral Reading
  passage, Level 5

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Assessing Oral Reading Accuracy (continued)

• One of the secrets of caricatures is to take part
  of the persons face which is in real life rather
  striking (a big nose, perhaps) and use that
  feature as the basis for the drawing. Very few of
  us have regular faces with everything of standard
  size, and perhaps if you look in the mirror, you
  will find something that is specially you.
• Caricature from Diagnostic Assessments of
  Reading, (1992). Riverside Itasca Oral Reading
  passage, Level 5

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Assessing Oral Reading Accuracy (continued)

• One of the secret(s) of the caricatures is to
  take 1 part of (the) a persons face which is
  in real life rather striking (a big nose,
  perhaps) and use (that) the (feature) future as
  the base(is) for the 3 drawing. Very few of
  us have regular face(s) (with) which everything
  of standard size, and perhaps if 1 you looked in
  the mirror, you will find something that is
  specially in you. 1
• Total real errors for the passage 8
• Caricature from Diagnostic Assessments of
  Reading, (1992). Riverside Itasca Oral Reading
  passage, Level 5

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Fluency Assessment (continued)

• Reading Prosody
• Does the reader chunk words into phrases bringing
  a rhythm to the text and some evidence of
  comprehension?

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Prosody Pause Scale

• 3 Smooth reading, with pauses occurring at
  appropriate points and few (if any) repetitions
• 2 Fairly steady reading, but with pauses
  occurring sometimes within phrases and/or some
  repetitions
• 1 Uneven/choppy reading, with frequent
  repetitions and/or lapses in phrasing and/or
  sounding out of words
• 0 Labored, word-by-word reading,with continual
  repetitions, frequent stopping, and/or sounding
  out of words

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Prosody Pause Scale (continued)

• We dont know when or where it startedthe fusion
  of African and European elements that made
  possible the uniquely American music called jazz.
  We dont even know where the strange four-letter
  word itself really came fromits etymology is as
  obscure as the origins of the music.
• Jazz from Diagnostic Assessments of Reading,
  (1992). Riverside Itasca Oral Reading passage,
  Level 9/10

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Prosody Pause Scale (continued)

• We do know that the music with the odd name,
  bred in the most humble circumstances, has become
  the first truly global art alongside the other
  form intrinsic to the twentieth century, the
  motion picture.
• The message of jazz, direct and immediate, speaks
  to the heart, across cultural, linguistic, and
  political barriers.
• Jazz from Diagnostic Assessments of Reading,
  (1992). Riverside Itasca Oral Reading passage,
  Level 9/10

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Instruction in Fluency
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Fluency Instruction

• Research-based Tips
• Use a fluency measure with (at least) beginning
  and intermediate-level readers.
• Use guided, repeated oral reading techniques to
  build reading fluency.

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Guided Repeated Oral Reading Techniques

• Reading to the teacher or tutor
• Echo reading
• Dyad or choral reading
• Paired or partner reading
• Tape-assisted reading
• Performance reading
• Cross-generational reading

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Fluency Instruction Practice

• Echo reading Time Machine passage
• Dyad reading Huckleberry Finn passage

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Fluency Instruction Practice

• Echo reading Time Machine passage
• Dyad reading Huckleberry Finn passage

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Other Issues inFluency Development

• Appropriate difficulty of materials
• Easier text for speed and phrasing
• More difficult text for accuracy (decoding
  practice)
• Audiotapes or CDs
• Teacher guidance
• Limit interruptions
• Silent reading (before oral)

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An Online Fluency Resource

• Reading Skills for Todays Adults
• on the Marshall, Minnesota website
• www.marshalladulteducation.org

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An Online Fluency Resourcewww.marshalladulteducat
ion.org/ reading_skills_home.htm

• An online collection of stories and articles for
  reading practice across a wide range of
  readability levels
• Oral readings users may access for each selection
  (readings at three different speeds)
• A timer that users may download to time their own
  readings
• A downloadable chart students may use to record
  their timed readings

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