14. Fluency & Exams 7 th Grade Skill/ability FCAT Performance Level 1 2 3 4 5 % Students at Level 28 21 29 17 6 WPM on FCAT 88 113 122 144 156 Fluency Percentile 7th 25th 45th 82nd 95th Phonemic Decoding 27th 53rd 63rd 74th 84th Verbal knowledge/reas. 34th 45th 64th 88th 93rd 1 Schatschneider, Buck, Torgesen, Wagner, Hassler, Hecht and Powell-Smith, A Multivariate Study of Individual Differences in Performance on the Reading Portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test: A Brief Report , Florida Center for Reading Research, 2004. Page 6
15. Fluency and the Brain Multiple oral readings with help build automaticity Disorganized neural pathways linked to dysfluency
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18. Cunningham & Stanovich. (1998) What reading does for the mind. American Educator , Spring/Summer, pp. 8-15. From Anderson,Wilson,& Fileding (1988). Growth in reading and how children spend their time outside of school .RRQ,23 ,285-303. Marilyn Jager Adams
19. GET THEM TO READ MORE!!! … But wait…HOW and WHAT???
55. Expected gain based on per-grade average of national norms collected by Hasbrouck & Tindal (1992) and Edformation (www.edformation.com). 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5 Fluency Gain (wcpm) (n = 182) (n = 228) Average 23% increase in fluency gain over control group Research Validation Expected Gain Control Reading Assistant Average 43% increase in fluency gain over national norms
You understand what Reading Assistant can offer your students You’re prepared to enroll your students You understand potential microphone pitfalls You are ready for your students to start using Reading Assistant You understand how to support their use You realize that Progress Tracker and Customer Connect are tools you can turn to for additional information and support
Teachers just struggle to deliver this experience with each student in their class each day – it’s not a scalable model and it’s a place where technology can support instruction.
Let’s talk about fluency and why it is so important.
Fluency leads to Comprehension and Comprehension actually helps improve fluency…. Fluency and Comprehension are like peanut butter and jelly – they just GO together!
Fluency is predictive in nature. Not only is fluency good in theory, it has an impact on student performance on high stakes test. Look at this example from Florida. From research we know that there is a high correlation between fluency and comprehension, from 85 to over 90% in some studies. Now there is evidence that fluency is a key missing skill in underperforming students at all grades. This deficiency is the cause of poor performance on state tests: “ The major problem that appears to prevent students from passing the FCAT in third grade is the inability to read text accurately and fluently.” A quote from Joe Torgesen from the FCRR. From this graph we see that this deficiency is not overcome by 7 th grade, with level 1 and 2 readers still highly very poor in fluency and in FCAT scores. That represents over 78% of students!
Beth Israel & Harvard research – Many areas of the brain are important for reading – fluency is about getting those areas working together well. Dysfluent brains are organized like back country roads where fluent brains have superhighways for connections to and from these areas. Reading Assistant provides frequent and intense oral readings which help to build automaticity in the brain.
It’s important that teachers’ expectations be set properly when they are introduced to the program. Reading Assistant is not a phonemic program – we will not stop a child if they say “wabbit’ for “rabbit”, if they leave off an “ed” ending, or they slightly mis pronounce. The idea is to assess each reading error, and only stop the student if the error they are making impedes comprehension. Just as a teacher would, we take not of words we have “concerns’ with – those are the blue review words – so that the student and teacher knows this word is not “automatic” and should be reviewed. Students should understand that re-reading is what will build their fluency best. We do not want students reading a passage just once and then moving on to a new passage. Re-visiting text, reviewing unfamiliar words multiple times will help with fluency development. Students should expect that they will need to re-read a passage several times – and note that mastery of the text is the goal. Fluency focus The software models the best classroom practices of a supportive listener. It wants to stop the reader as infrequently as possible while still ensuring the/she doesn’t miss words that impede comprehension. It does not demand exactness; if an “s” or “ed” is left off, the software will allow the student to continue. The software errors on the side on non-intervention, but it will flag words not fluently recognized and mark them for review. The software is particularly lenient with glue words; (the, and, at, it). Basic decoding skills necessary This is not an appropriate tool for students who can not decode. The frustration of continual intervention will impede fluency growth. Designed to support and respond to common reading errors of students During training, teachers understandably test the program’s ability to detect and support reading errors. Many of the errors made in training sessions are not representative of a typical student error. The best way to evaluate and the program’s capabilities is to have a student use it.
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