Fluency Self-Evaluation Useful in both elementary and secondary texts depending on the difficulty of the text, the Fluency Self-Evaluation challenges students to take ownership of their own literacy development. Students can fill out the self-evaluation themselves, or teachers can create teacher evaluations or peer evaluations that record student fluency. By focusing on the four areas of accuracy, rate, expression, and punctuation, students must perform an oral reading and evaluate their performance. Following their evaluation, they must comment on what they would like to focus on for next time. Students must also describe the method they are going to employ to achieve their next fluency objective.
Theissen, L. (2011, February 1). Fluency Checklist [Weblog post]. Retrieved from http://thefirstgradesweetlife.blogspot.com/2011/02/ -merry-tuesday.html
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Reading Around the Room This strategy is suggested by Steve Refiman, an elementary school teacher from Santa Monica, California. He uses the Reading Around the Room strategy to increase student awareness of commas and periods. To begin the activity, he instructs students to stand in a circle. Next, he hands out a textbook to each student and explains that the class will be moving around the circle while reading aloud together. As they read as a full class, students must stop for one second when they reach a comma and two seconds when they reach a period. Reading and stopping at the same time helps students to understand the importance of stopping when they reach punctuation. It also prevents them from plowing through punctuation and in doing so, losing comprehension.
Reifman, S. (2012, November 18). Teaching Kids to Improve Their Reading Fluency. Retrieved from http://www.youtube .com/watch?v=5bSTUbRpVZk
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Cookie Thief Fluency Game The Cookie Fluency game is a fun and interactive way to incorporate fluency into elementary instruction. Students pick up a cookie card and read the sentence on their card without making a mistake. If they make a mistake, students must put their card in the discard pile. The student who has the most cookies at the end of the game is the winner! For the secondary classroom, teachers could create cards with a short passage in order to practice fluency, comprehension, and review important sections of the curriculum.
Theissen. (2011, February 1). Cookie Thief: A Fluency Game [Weblogpost]. Retrieved from http://thefirst gradesweetlife.blogspot.com/2011/02/very-merry-tuesday.html
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Fluency Phones Fluency phones are a great strategy to use in a noisy, and often times, chaotic elementary classroom. Available at hardware stores around the country, this simple PVC elbow pipe is inexpensive and fun to use for practicing reading fluency. Often times, students find listening to their own oral reading difficult while in close proximity to their peers. Comprehending within the text is difficult when students cannot even hear their own reading. Using the unique plumbing pipe device as a fluency phone, student can hear their reading amplified without disturbing others around them.
The Balanced Literacy Diet (2011, November 19). Fluency Phones: Amplifying Students' Voices in Oral Reading.Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vL6lwbGRTI&list=PLC05DE60B3540C412
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