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Cassella, S. (2021, June 7). A 3-Step Strategy to Build Students’ Reading Fluency. Edutopia; George Lucas Educational Foundation. https://www.edutopia.org/article/3-step-strategy-build-students-reading-fluency

Cushman, C. (2012, March 7). Instructional Strategies for Emergent Literacy. Paths to Literacy; Paths to Literacy. https://www.pathstoliteracy.org/instructional-strategies-emergent-literacy/

Denton, C., Reed, J., & Vaughn, D. (2017). Identifying Narrative Text Structures Adapted with permission from the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk. In Identifying Narrative Text Structures. National Center on Intensive Intervention. https://fcrr.org/sites/g/files/upcbnu2836/files/media/PDFs/reading-endorsement/comp4/NCII%20Comprehension%20Lesson.pdf

Johnson, A. P. (2016). 10 Essential Instructional Elements For Students With Reading Difficulties : A Brain-Friendly Approach. Corwin.

Literacy For All Instruction. (2016). Word identification and decoding | Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities. Literacyforallinstruction.ca. https://literacyforallinstruction.ca/working-with-words/

National Reading Panel. (2017, August 12). Phonics Instruction. Reading Rockets; WETA. https://www.readingrockets.org/article/phonics-instruction

Sejnost, R., & Thiese, S. (2012, August 16). Reading (and Scaffolding) Expository Texts. Reading Rockets; WETA. https://www.readingrockets.org/article/reading-and-scaffolding-expository-texts

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Reader's theater is a fluency strategy where teachers provide students with scripts of a reading by organizing the reading into parts either based on characters or number of sentences. Students are then put into an order so they know exactly what part they will be reading and when. This strategy is a popular alternative to popcorn reading as it removes the fear of not knowing when you are going to be called on and allows for deeper fluency concentration on the assigned part.

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This strategy for fluency involves teachers reading out loud daily to their students. This can be from a textbook or story of interest for the students or any other content relevant reading. This strategy helps to demonstrate new and unfamiliar vocabulary while also showing them proper sentence structure within a reading. For primary grades, picture books should be used more often than not as they provide a visual element to help students form meaning outside of the words.

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These are books that are written on a topic of high interest to students in grades 5-12 but are written at a lower reading level akin to that of a first or second grader. These books are usually centered on a singular concept and full of many pictures to help students formulate ideas about what is happening in the book without having to entirely derive it from the text. This is a useful scaffolding strategy as it plays on students' prior knowledge of the image and building neural pathways to understanding and comprehension by providing both visual and text-based context. This method is very effective in aiding struggling readers.

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Young readers learn how to self-direct when they read in pairs, read the same text repeatedly, and use fluency trackers.

Fluency is often discussed by elementary teachers simply as the rate of words read aloud per minute, although the full definition includes reading accuracy plus voice tone and inflection. It's an important measure of student reading success, and as students move through grades, poor fluency becomes increasingly serious. To raise fluency levels, students need to practice reading in short bursts of effort, and they need to practice word attack skills that are used for frustration-level text, in which more than one out of 20 words are difficult to decode.

Independent reading is one way to help students build fluency, but we all know that they're not necessarily going to focus if you simply hand them a book and tell them to read it. I've found that if I combine repeat reading, paired reading, and fluency trackers, students are more motivated to do that crucial work that builds fluency.

Building Fluency in the Classroom

In my teaching practice, I've long relied on two strategies to support my students' literacy growth: repeated reading and fluency trackers (grids on which students record their fluency scores over time). Reading a passage multiple times (repeated reading) scaffolds the student's ability both to decode and to remember familiar words and syllable patterns, building their fluency and comprehension; and fluency trackers give students agency and motivate them while giving me a quick read on their progress. When integrating repeated reading with fluency trackers, I often use a one-page passage: Students read the passage three times, graphing each attempt (first, second, and third) with a different-colored crayon.

That combination has always served me well, but once I added in a third component-paired reading-I noticed that not only did the atmosphere in the classroom get a boost, but engagement improved and students got their work done more readily. Repeated reading gives them the practice and reinforcement they need to build their literacy skills, the pairing creates a positive social element, and the fluency trackers simultaneously help them to self-direct, see their progress, and stay on track while working in pairs, when socializing is tempting.

Steps to Fluency Tracker Practice

Create a tracker folder for each student: Use a letter-size manila folder, and staple in a data tracker for fluency scores. (You can find fluency trackers in a number of places, such as these free ones, or you can create your own using graph paper.)

Locate and print out reading passages: Find passages that are somewhere between the student's instructional and frustrational reading level. Often, reading passages of this type are available in the support materials to the grade-level reading program at your school. You'll need two copies of each passage for each pair: one for the student reading and one for the listener/scorer.

Pair the students: Match students who read at about the same level. Consider sociability and distractibility as well. If one student is volatile or touchy, put them with a classmate who has a calm, steady personality.

Model paired reading and fluency tracker record keeping: To model fluency tracking, gather the class in a circle so they can watch you and a student as the two of you go through the process of doing a timed fluency reading. Set a timer and have the model student begin reading. After a minute, stop the timer, count the words, report the score to the student, and have the student record the result on the fluency tracker.

Send the students out to practice: After giving the students the names of their partners, review the behavior norms (voice level, where they are to sit, how to get help) and direct them to try using their fluency trackers themselves.

Debrief and continue to practice: Once your students have tried paired reading and fluency tracking, bring them together to answer questions and work out the kinks-for example, "Did anyone have trouble using the timers?" While they are working, walk around the class to see how the students are reading and to make sure they stay on task. Eventually, they will require minimal supervision.

Give students the opportunity to set their own goals: Make the goals specific; allow them to be personal, not public; and include a time for reaching the goal. Appropriate goals might be reaching a certain level of fluency ("I'll be able to read 60 words a minute by the first of the next month") or accuracy ("I'll read for one minute with two errors or less by winter break").

Once you've landed on a routine for fluency trackers, schedule them regularly for 10 to 15 minutes at a time.

I used this strategy with a small group of second graders this spring, and three out of four students made significant gains in speed over four months with daily practice, while half of them doubled their reading speed. A colleague used fluency trackers with fourth graders who were reading significantly below grade level; in a group with a dozen or so students, all made significant fluency gains-and they enjoyed the activity. "They love it!" she told me. "When it's time for fluency, they jump up to get their folders and get to work. It's wonderful."

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A 3-Step Strategy to Build Students' Reading Fluency

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Young readers learn how to self-direct when they read in pairs, read the same text repeatedly, and use fluency trackers.

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Phonemic segmentation is a strategy in which teachers can introduce their students to the different phonemes that make up a word and how you can break words down into parts. In these activities teachers provide students with full words then students must break them down into the correct phonemic segments. To do this effectively and develop an understanding of how word groups and phonemes come together to make words, have students say the full word, followed by each phoneme segment, then the full words again.

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This strategy is used to engage students in meaningful literacy instruction and involving them in many different ways of doing so. The first whole part corresponds to immersing children in authentic reading and writing experiences. The part aspect then refers to providing students with some small instruction within the reading experience to bolster their knowledge. This can look like a fill in the blank section on a given topic in between sections of a reading. The next whole refers to once again promoting the students' ability to explore more authentic literacy activities such as having them write or draw about what they read or learned.

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Code First - Also called the reading readiness approach, this strategy a believes that students must receive a large amount of direct instruction in order to learn how to properly read. This method stresses focus on lecturing about different reading skills and how to use them by practicing them over and over again. While this method has some success it is largely considered to be weaker as it does not show any increase in oral reading, comprehension, spelling or word recognition.
Meaning First - Also known as the emergent literacy approach, stresses that literacy is a product of skills and tendencies that develop naturally in young readers as they develop and experience certain events. Meaning first classrooms are centered on these principles:
-They're immersed in actual, real life speaking experiences
-They're provided small bits of instruction in authentic contexts
-They're encouraged to talk about things that make sense and are of interest to them
-They use language for real-life purposes
-We respond to them instead of correcting them
-We encourage their early attempts and successful approximations
-Language is used in play and social interactions
-(Johnson 2016, P.88)

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Instructional Strategies for Emergent Literacy – Paths to Literacy

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Paths to Literacy Instructional Strategies for Emergent Literacy. For teachers, families, and others interested in literacy for children and youth with visual impairments

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Writing is described as an extremely valuable resource when it comes to strengthening students understanding of word sounds and how they interact in text. These programs make the individual letter sound as students type the words out then once they complete the given word it repeats it back to them. This way, students can see what sounds different groups of letters make and how they change when mixed with other groups or when forming words.

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This strategy for teaching phonics involves providing a common letter sound to students then asking them to dive back into texts they have already read to find examples of the given sound. Students can record the words they find in a journal or dictionary of sorts to keep record of the relation among words and their sound groups.

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Synthetic vs Analytic Phonics Instruction

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Synthetic vs Analytic Phonics Instruction

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Synthetic - This approach to phonics defines when teachers have students approach phonics by first determining the sounds present then using the sounds to create(synthesize) full words. It can also be referred to as the part-to-whole method.
Analytic - This approach teaches students to determine sound groups from words they already know then use those groups to create other words by identifying the common parts between the two. This can also be referred to as the whole to part method.

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As a licenced teacher and later as a principal, I have successfully educated more than 300 students ranging in age from 5 to 20 at a private school I founded and operated for 9 years. All my students were failing in either public or private schools when they came to me. The one main thing that all my students had in common regardless of the medical designation they had was that their reading comprehension skills were extremely weak. This is a common occurance for a full one third of the population. Hence my brand name...One Third.

We did not focus on Phonics at this point as my research indicated that until someone has mastered the art of a basic reading vocabulary (alphabet, 150 words that mean nothing, sentence formation, the parts of speech, punctuation), it is impossible to progress with success to a writing vocabulary which of course includes sounds and blends, etc.

Most schools today blend the reading and writing vocabularies. That is one of the main reasons why fully one third of students today are failing in school and have difficulty in the workforce.

If schools want to allow all children the opportunity to reach their potential, it is my opinion based on solid evidence that we must change how we introduce our children to reading. If you cannot add....you cannot subtract. If you cannot add and subtract, you cannot multiply. If you cannot add, subtract and multiply, you cannot divide.

The same is true for listening, spoken, reading and written vocabularies.

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As a licenced teacher and later as a principal, I have successfully educated more than 300 students ranging in age from 5 to 20 at a private school I founded and operated for 9 years. All my students were failing in either public or private schools when they came to me.

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Onset rime is a strategy of teaching word identification by presenting students with a worksheet or flashcards that have a word broken down into its onset (the first letter or letter blend in a word) and rime (a word family or phonogram following the onset). This method can be split into many different activities such as keeping the rime the same and changing the onset to explore phonogram variations. The same can be done by switching the rime and keeping the same onset. The most common way to assess with this method is to present the student with the onset and rime separately and having them put together the word correctly.

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In this strategy that promotes students' ability to create compound sentences and conjunctions. Students are given a number of small sentences; they must then combine the sentences while keep the meaning that the smaller sentences originally had. Ex.) The fire raced through the abandoned warehouse. The fire levelled it in an hour = The fire raced through the abandoned warehouse, levelling it in an hour.

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Cloze sentences are sentences that have an entire word removed or at least partially removed from the paper. These sentences are used to help students learn how to use context clues to be able to identify the word that best fits the example sentence. This can be adapted for lower reading levels by including more of the partial word in the sentence

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Literacy Instruction for
Students with Significant Disabilities

"Students who read only by sight or the recognition of sight words are not likely to read text with comprehension above very beginning levels. To achieve successful reading with comprehension, students must have the ability to decode unfamiliar words."
-Karen Erickson, Making Words for Students with Complex Instructional Needs

WORD IDENTIFICATION AND DECODING

What is word identification and decoding?

D uring word work, explicit instruction on the patterns of English spelling is provided. Students are taught how to use letter patterns to decode and spell new words when they are reading and writing.

At an emergent level, word work will focus on phonemic awareness with activities created to bring attention to rhyme (word endings), rhythm (memory), repetition, alliteration (word onsets), and predictability. For older emergent literacy learners, it is important to keep all activities age respectful.

Word work at a conventional level would include making words, word sorts and transfer, word wall activities and keyword decoding.

Which students would benefit from word identification and decoding?

All students benefit from regular and supported opportunities to work with words in structured and engaging ways. Students who know most of the letters most of the time would benefit from word identification and decoding through word work.

How can students benefit from word identification and decoding?

The purposes of teaching working with words are to:

help students become strategic in reading words

help students learn high frequency words needed for fluent, successful reading with comprehension

teach students the skills required to decode and spell words they will use for reading and writing

help students understand how words work.

How can we teach word identification and decoding?

Word identification and decoding can be taught through the use of:

making words

word sorts and transfer

word wall activities

keyword decoding

Every making words lesson has three parts. First students manipulate the letters to make words. This part of the lesson uses a spelling approach to help students learn letter sounds and how to segment words and blend letters. In the second part of the lesson, students sort words according to related words and rhyming patterns. During the transfer step, students are helped to use the related and rhyming words to spell new words.

The word wall is the focus at the end of every lesson, and is a critical component in helping students to use words they already know to help them read similar words they encounter in context or isolation. Word walls are visual displays of core words used to support students in their daily reading and writing. There are three levels of word wall lesson activities: introduce new word wall words, daily review of word wall words, and lesson review.

Making Words

Making Words (Cunningham & Hall, 1994, 1997) is an activity designed to teach students to look for spelling patterns in words and recognize the differences that result when a single letter is changed. Teachers guide students in manipulating their individual set of six to eight letters to create words. The six to eight letters can be arranged to form a "secret" word, but the teacher begins by guiding students through the creation of one-, two-, and three-letter words, and so on, through six- or eight-letter words from the set. The order is carefully selected to help students identify common spelling patterns and recognize the impact of changing one or two letters or the order of a set of letters.

As the students make the words, one student goes to the front of the room and uses a set of large letter cards to make the word for all to use for self-correction. The student also puts an index card with the word written on it in a pocket chart before quickly returning to their seat to make the next word. After all of the words have been made, the teacher guides the students in sort and transfer activities that help them focus on the spelling patterns in the words they have made. (Children with Disabilities: Reading & Writing the Four-Blocks Way, p. 119-120, 2006)

Sort and Transfer

In the sorting activity, the teacher begins by asking students to read all of the words that are in the pocket chart. The teacher then asks the students to group the words that rhyme and share a spelling pattern. She also asks students if they can sort the words based on any other similarities. Sometimes they sort the words for other features (for example, first or last letter, common vowel, length, meaning, or presence of a capital letter).

In the transfer step of the Making Words activity, the teacher writes other words on index cards. The teacher does not just ask students to read the words. Instead, the teacher asks them to tell which of the words they made would help them read the new word if they encountered it in text. Only after they have identified the correct spelling pattern and put the new word on the chart do they read the new word. (Children with Disabilities: Reading & Writing the Four-Blocks Way, p. 119-120, 2006)

Word Wall

The Word Wall is used in activities every day with new words added gradually and practiced repeatedly until they become words that students can read with automaticity, spell with accuracy, and use to read and spell unfamiliar words.

Beginning with lesson one and every tenth lesson after that, five words are added to the Word Wall. Words are displayed under the letter with which they begin and in the order they were introduced in the lessons (not in alphabetical order).

Students practice the words on the wall every day by clapping, chanting, and writing some of the words. They review the words using a variety of activities. Finally, teachers systematically support students in using the Word Wall in reading and writing activities throughout the day. (Children with Disabilities: Reading & Writing the Four-Blocks Way, p. 112, 2006)

Teachers who use a Word Wall successfully make the words on the wall easy for everyone in the classroom to see. Display the Word Wallin a highly visible location in the classroom and refer to it often to model identifying the key words and/or word patterns that give students the clues they need to decode unfamiliar words.

Portable word walls can be used by individual students so that they can add personal words as well as take them to refer to when in other classes.

Word Wall Activities
The interplay between writing and reading is especially important for the emergent reader and writer. We want to help students recognize high frequency words quickly and automatically while reading for meaning. Knowing them facilitates fluent reading and allows the reader to pay attention to new words.

Be a Mind Reader
The teacher thinks of a word on the wall and then gives five clues about that word. The students share a 'guess' for each clue.

Guess the Covered Word
Guess the Covered Word is an activity designed to teach students how to cross-check letter-sound-based decoding strategies with meaning. The teacher writes a sentence on the board covering one word in the sentence with two sticky notes. One note covers the letters preceding the first vowel (the onset) and the other note covers the rest of the word (the rime).

The teacher reads the sentence to the class, skipping the covered word, and asks the students to suggest words that would make sense in the sentence. The students provide guesses as the teacher writes them on the board. Then, the teacher removes the first sticky note to reveal the onset. The teacher then leads the students in checking each of their guesses to see which would still be possible given the onset that has been revealed. The students provide additional guesses starting with the revealed onset. When all of the words that fit both the meaning of the sentence and the letters have been guessed, the teacher removes the remaining sticky note to reveal the word. (Children with Disabilities: Reading & Writing the Four-Blocks Way, p. 122, 2006)

"The purposes of the Word Wall are to teach children to read and spell words with automaticity and accuracy, while teaching them strategies to use the known words on the wall to read

and spell unknown words." -Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver from Children With Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four Blocks Way

Keyword Decoding

Keyword decoding can be thought of decoding by analogy. The goal is to have only a single keyword representing each of the common spelling patterns.

Teaching Key Words
Identify a single word for each of the high frequency spelling patterns on the list (see Keywords Planning Form). Try to identify words that the student can already read and words that are meaningful to the student. You should eventually have 37 keywords, but you can start teaching the strategy as soon as you have identified 6-8 that the student can read.

Known Words to Use in Teaching the Using Words You Know Strategy
While the student is learning to read the keywords, they should be learning to use keywords they do know to read novel words. Two specific strategies that could be used to help students learn the analogy based approach include word sorts and compare/contrast.

It is important to have the keyword list available to the student during all reading and writing activities. If the student is trying to decode an unfamiliar or unknown word, they can be prompted by asking, "Do you have a keyword that would help you?"
From the article, Keyword Decoding, Center for Literacy and Disability Studies

Resources:

Systematic Sequential Phonics They Use by Patricia M. Cunningham

This book helps teachers provide activities in which students discover how words work. These activities include Making Words and Word Wall, which are included in each 5-lesson cycle. The Word Wall is a critical component of Systematic Sequential Phonics They Use. High frequency words are added as a part of every 5 lessons. Words are displayed under the letter in the alphabet in the order introduced. In addition to the classroom Word Wall, the students are given a take-home Word Wall each week that contains all the words on their classroom Word Wall. As a fun component to teaching phonics, students reinforce their learned skills with "Wordo", a variation to the popular Bingo game.
© 2000. 192 pages.
*Systematic Sequential Phonics They Use is only available in a digital version. Search online to find the best price!

Making Words
Based on Dr. Patricia Cunningham'sMaking Words, Dr. Karen Erickson has developed 50 phonics lessons to introduce and build decoding

skills for students with complex instructional needs. This resource also incorporates Dr. Cunningham's approach to building decoding and spelling strategies featured in her book, Systematic Sequential Phonics They Use.

Making Words was only available in the Don Johnson MEville to WEville with the Literacy Starters Curriculum package and through Bridges in Canada.

Where can I learn more about word identification and decoding?

Word Wall, Word Activities and Extension into Writing
This presentation highlights the importance of meaningful, purposeful communication in learning to read and write and connecting oral language to phonological awareness. Many interactive and engaging word wall and word activity examples are provided.
http://literacyforallab.ca/past-webinars

Working with Words
Alberta teachers demonstrate how they use word walls and related making word activities to build literacy skills of all students in their classroom, including students with significant disabilities. (Length: 7 minutes 2 seconds)

Video - Working with Words
Learning Guide - Working with Words

Support for Implementation

The resources found on this site were developed by the ERLC, a member of Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia (ARPDC), as a result of grants from Alberta Education, to support implementation.

Learning for All | Copyright © 2016
Terms of Use | Contact Us

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Word identification and decoding | Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities

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Literacy Instruction for Students with Significant Disabilities "Students who read only by sight or the recognition of sight words are not likely to read text with comprehension above very beginning levels. To achieve successful reading with comprehension, students must have the ability to decode unfamiliar words."

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A valuable resource teachers can use when reading narrative texts to further students' comprehension of story events is to have them create cause and effect graphs. These can either entirely be created by students or teachers can provide the first column and have students fill out the second column as they read. This strategy helps encourage students to be able to see how one plot point in a story can affect another.

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Another important aspect of narrative text is promoting visualization in students to help promote emotional connection and comprehension by having them create mental images. One way to promote this in a classroom is to have students create mental images and either draw or write down what they see. These descriptions can then be sent around the classroom with each students trying to add an element to the image. This helps students to explore their own mind as well as view a scene from other perspectives they may not have considered.

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Story grammar is a strategy that teachers can use as a pre, post and during reading activity to help students engage with the plot and its elements. The pre-reading activity involves giving students and outline of the basic story elements as a look into what they are about to read. As a post reading activity teachers can present students with the chart above and have them fill it out with what they learned in the reading. For during reading, teachers may mix the two and give students a partially completed chart and have them fill out the rest while exploring the text to promote active reading.

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Read and pause is a studying strategy that students may use when reading expository texts to ensure they understood what they read. This method involves reading a section of text, pausing, then going back and stating something from the reading that was just done. This helps students to realize when they are spacing out and can help keep them focused on the reading.

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Guided notes are a great resource for helping students to interact with reading material. Instead of just having students read the text or create their own notes the teacher creates a structured notes page that mirrors the reading. These pages then have words cut out or guided questions (more for higher reading levels) so that the students have to follow along in the reading and answer them as they go. This helps to encourage deeper comprehension as students have to actively read as opposed to just skimming.

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Teachers can create outlines of the text for their students by including key details and features of the reading they are about to work on. By doing so teachers can ensure that students have the scaffolds and structure necessary to interact with the text on a meaningful level. Should be in line with students' reading levels.

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Reading and Scaffolding for Expository Text

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Reading and Scaffolding for Expository Text

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Armbruster, B., Anderson, T.H., & Ostertag, J. (1989). Teaching text structure to improve reading and writing. The Reading Teacher, 43(2), 130-137.
Biancarosa, G. & Snow, C. (2004). Reading Next - A vision for action and research in middle school and high school literacy. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.
Buehl, D. (2001). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Burke, J. (2000). Reading reminders: Tools, tips and techniques. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Fisher, D. & Frey, D. (2008). Improving adolescent literacy: content area strategies at work.Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Garber-Miller, K. (2007). Playful textbook previews: Letting go of familiar mustache monologues. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 50(4), 284-288.
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Reading (and Scaffolding) Expository Texts

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The five most common structures utilized in informational text are cause-effect, comparison-contrast, definition-example, problem-solution, and proposition support or sequential listing. To help students recognize and identify these structures, teachers can acquaint them with the signal or cue words authors utilize in writing each of the structures.