It's my first week of summer, and I'm already immersed in a PD class on Jan Richardson's The Next Step in Guided Reading. LOVE starting my summer with food for thought as I reflect on the past year and all the things I want to revamp, revise, or totally redo. Also super convenient that the book was one of the ones on my summer reading list. :)
During a breakout time the topic of fluency came up on many fronts as we reflected on a portion of the text stating that running records may not be needed for fluent readers. In upper elementary many of our students are "fluent readers," so do we need to teach and monitor fluency? We debated and mulled over needing data or evidence to show growth to parents, how to use fluency data, how to define what being a fluent reader is, etc... Our district uses AIMSWeb to monitor fluency, and several teachers expressed that there are times when, according to AIMS norms, a student hasn't achieved "fluent reader status" based on the number of words they read correctly in a minute, even though the teacher would consider this student to be fluent. One strategist shared the story of a teacher who had asked for her to listen to and give her opinion on a "non fluent" student's reading. After listening to the student, the strategist she agreed that he was fluent...so fluent, in fact, that he would probably be narrating TV commercials one day. Is speed everything? No.
Let me share another story from my experience. Enter student A...let's name him Aaron. According to AIMSWeb, Aaron is fluent. He reads in the range of 240-280 wpm, which ranks him in the highest category of proficiency according to AIMS. So did I mark him as proficient in the area of fluency when communicating home? Nope! Did this surprise parents? YES! Aaron is a gifted student, and I'm sure that he has probably always been noted as being proficient. So why did I not grant him this achievement? When Aaron reads aloud he has one pace. Fast. So fast that he slurs and omits words, mumbles, and can barely be understood by his peers. He may have the ability to read every word perfectly, but his technique prevents us from grasping even a basic idea of what he is reading about. Is speed everything? No.
Fluency is so often defined as speed and accuracy, but as students become "fluent readers" its meaning MUST become more in depth. Our shift in thinking about and teaching fluency must gradually move from speed and accuracy to phrasing, intonation, and expression. Or, as I verbalize to my students, using your voice as a tool to interpret and bring a story to life. The ability to do this is SO POWERFUL, as it not only reflects fluency, but also reflects a reader's level of understanding. They way readers read shows us they are considering the emotions, personalities, and relationships of characters, and the pace and energy of certain events or segments in stories. Fluency not only shows us a students ability to decode words, but, more importantly, their ability to uncover the many layers of a story or text. So back to the two readers I described above...from our observation of his reading, is our future commercial voice comprehending what he is reading? Yes, and probably at a higher level. Is my Aaron comprehending? Yes, but typically only the gist of the story. As you might have guessed, there were many elements of texts we read in class that went unnoticed to him.
As students get older we often see a discrepancy between a student's fluency (number of words read correctly in a minute) and overall comprehension. Why is that? I believe that it is because we as teachers so often discontinue working on fluency once our students decode accurately. I have been guilty of this. Not because I wasn't teaching my students to read or think about the way their voice sounded as they read aloud, but because up until recently I haven't really considered what is advanced fluency. How do I go more in depth with students and create more rigorous learning experiences? How do we model close reading and guide our students to become analytical readers? How do they peel off layers of a story like an onion to digest character relationships, struggles and conflicts, point of view, etc, and to engage in meaningful discussion and reflection? By becoming truly proficient, fluent readers, who can bring a text to life no matter if they are reading aloud or on their own.
So to go back to the question raised by our group of teachers this morning...do we need to continue to teach and monitor fluency once students are "fluent readers?" Yes, I believe we do.
