An Essential History of current Reading practices - Mary jo fresch

1. An Essential History of current Reading practices-Mary jo fresch Chapter 6 Summary Fluency: Traversing a Rocky Road of Practice and Research -Rasinski & Mraz

2. early conceptions of fluency: where have we been? Influences on conceptions of fluency • Social contexts • Desired instructional outcomes • Expected standards for literacy • Literacy uses in different eras

3. 18th century • Few people could read, often one per household • Books were limited • Reading was a family event to exchange information or for pleasure • Expressive oral reading was the desired outcome of reading

4. By the beginning of the 20th century • Two societal changes occurred • Meaning became a focus of reading over elocution • Reading materials became more accessible, causing reading to become more of an individual, silent activity

5. First half of the 20th century • Silent reading and comprehension become the focus as a desired outcome and instructional practice • 1930s – 1940s Chicago schools used the nonoral method of exclusively teaching silent reading • Silent reading supported the reading needed on newly developed standardized testing • Gray’s study showed that students with higher levels of silent reading proficiency scored higher on standardized tests • Reading assessments from the 1920s – 1940s did not have a fluency component

6. The rise of round robin reading • Oral reading did not leave the classroom; it changed • Mainstay of reading instruction through the second half of the 20th century • Integrated part of basal programs • Typically did not include any before or after activities or discussions of the text • Struggling and good readers have negative remembrances of the activity

7. Fluency research in the second half of the 20th century • Fluency was understudied by researchers from the early 1900s to the late 20th century • Behaviorism was the predominant mode of research (outside-the-head topics) • 1960s comprehension and fluency research begin to emerge due to the advent of cognitive psychology (inside-the-head topics) • Development of psycholinguistics, reading is an active thinking process using Goodman’s cueing systems

8. Automaticity theory • Laberge & Samuel (1974) • First modern theoretical conception of reading fluency • Surface level processing of words should be automatic, requiring minimal cognitive resources • Attention can be used for understanding meaning • Samuels (1979) • Automaticity is in many everyday activities • Practice is the key to success • Use of repeated readings to increase accuracy, speed and expression • Stanovich(1980) • Interactive compensatory explanation of reading fluency • Difference between good and poor readers was the way they processed information

9. Variations of repeated reading • Chomsky (1976) • Repeated reading combined with the Neurological Impress Method • Assisted reading or reading while listening • Students repeatedly read a text while listening to it being read to them fluently • Schreiber (1980) • Offered another reason for Samuel’s results with repeated reading • Students were gaining a greater awareness of prosody and syntax in oral and silent reading

10. Fluency today • Allington (1983) • Fluency is neglected in the reading curriculum • Recognize the importance of fluency in reading proficiency • Pinnell & colleagues (1995) • Study of 4th graders • Relationship between oral reading and reading comprehension • Verified the importance of fluency • Students who read orally with proficiency scored higher on silent reading tests

11. Fluency today • Fuchs, Fuchs, & Maxwell (1988) • Correlation between reading fluency and performance on standardized tests • Scholars • Realize the importance of oral, expressive and automatic reading of texts in overall reading proficiency

12. improving fluency • Strategies • Modeled fluent reading • Practiced or repeated reading • Assisted reading or reading while listening to a fluent reader • Phrase-cued reading • Dowhower (1989) • Repeated reading is an effective intervention strategy

13. the influence of the national reading panel • The Report of the National Reading Panel (2000) • Raised awareness of the importance of fluency • Fluency is one of the five key elements of reading • Guided reading promotes fluency in the elementary grades • Padak & Rasinski(in press) • Fluency is a bridge between decoding and comprehension • Accuracy, automaticity, and prosody

14. “By today’s standards, fluency is the ability to read meaningful, as well as, accurately and with appropriate speed. Fluency enables readers to acquire control over surface-level text processing so that decoding and comprehending can occur simultaneously,” (Rasinski, 2003; Samuels, 2006).