Teaching: Lesson Plans Teaching Methods

Teaching: Lesson Plans

Teaching Methods in Education: Teaching Reading Fluency

The objective of this work is to design a plan to integrate fluency teaching strategies by (1) identifying a minimum of five fluency building strategies; (2) provide an explanation and rationale for each strategy; (3) describe how three reading fluency activities will be included in the Dr. Seuss unit; and (4) include a rationale for each activity (strategy).

Activities for early literacy programs include the activities as follows:

Listening to stories, poems and expository text;

Telling and retelling stories and nursery rhymes;

Singing and chanting (including the alphabet song)

Discussing word meanings, ideas, books and experiences;

Making predictions about words and stories (Building A Powerful Reading Program: From Research to Practice, 2003)

Activities that can be used in schools that teach children "concepts about print and foster a love of reading" include reading to children daily, using books with predictable patterns, repetition and rhyme and is inclusive of the following:

Labeling children's cubbies and work areas;

Listing birthdays, chores, and daily activities;

Teaching page arrangement, directionality and story structure through repeated readings and repetitive texts (big books are especially useful for these purposes)

Noting words that begin or end with the same sound, words with the same pattern, and punctuation cues;

Sharing wonderful stories and informational literature;

Creating and posting student-generated stories (Building A Powerful Reading Program: From Research to Practice, nd)

Phonemic awareness can be fostered by teaching children a general awareness of: (1) rhyming; (2) blending; (3) segmentation; (4) initial sound; (5) final sound; and (6) medial sound. Findings of the National Institute for Literacy published in the work entitled: "Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read" states five critical areas of reading instruction which are those of: (1) phonemic awareness; (2) phonics; (3) fluency; (4) vocabulary; and (5) test comprehension. (National Institute for Literacy, 2003) The National Institute for Literacy publication states that: "Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work." (National Institute for Literacy, 2003) Further related is that: "Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that makes a difference in the word's meaning." (National Institute for Literacy, 2003) The example given is the difference in the phoneme in the word hat when 'h' changes to 'p' and the word changes to pat.

The National Institute of Literacy states that: "Phonics instruction teaches children the relationships between the letters of written language and the individual sounds of spoken language. It teaches these children to use these relationships to read and write words. Teachers of reading and publishers of programs of beginning reading instruction sometimes use different labels to describe these relationships, including the following: (1) graphophonemic relationships; (2) letter-sound associations; (3) letter-sound correspondences; (4) sound-symbol correspondences; and (5) sound-spellings." (nd) The example given is the difference in the way that phone is spelled where the 'ph' sounds like 'f'. Fluency, according to the National Institute of Literacy is: "the ability to read a text accurately and quickly. When fluent readers read silently, they recognize words automatically. They group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they ready. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Their reading sounds natural, as if they are speaking." (National Institute for Literacy, 2003) The importance of fluency is that: "...it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension." (National Institute for Literacy, nd) Examples of classroom instruction in reading that promote reading 'fluency' are monitored oral reading aloud by students and independent silent reading of a repeated nature. Vocabulary "refers to the words we must know to communicate effectively. In general vocabulary can be described as oral vocabulary or reading vocabulary. Oral vocabulary refers to words we use in speaking of recognize in listening. Reading vocabulary refers to words we recognize or use in print. Vocabulary is also very important to reading comprehension." (National Institute for Literacy, 2003) The Institute of Literacy states that children "learn the meanings of most words indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and written language." (2003) There are three ways that children learn word meanings as follows: (1) engaging in daily oral language; (2) listening to adults read to them; and (3) reading extensively on their own. There are two methods of direct instruction which are: (1) providing students with specific word instruction; and (2) teaching students word-learning strategies." (National Institute for Literacy, 2003) Word learning strategies include teaching children how to (1) use dictionaries; (2) how to use information about word parts to figure out the meanings of words in text; and (3) how to use context clues to determine word meanings. (National Institute for Literacy, 2003) The fifth and last strategy is testing the comprehension of the student which can be done both in oral and written forms of comprehension testing.