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Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

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Students will be able to fluently read and comprehend text at their reading level.

Students will be able to fluently read and comprehend text with grade level words using a checklist for support.

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Students will use their reading logs or journals and write down two things they learned from the reading.

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Have students share with the class one or two things the believe they can work on in regards to reading fluency.

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Collect student reading logs or journals, as well as the My Fluency Checklist! as a formative assessment to plan future lessons on reading fluency.

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I will read a book called "Here We Are", by Oliver Jeffers. During the reading I will point out key words and ask questions about the text and pictures to gauge the students comprehension level.

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Being able to read fluently -meaning with speed, accuracy, and expression-is an important literacy skill for students to develop. When students are able to read without stumbling over words-and with appropriate tone and expression-their comprehension will improve, and they'll enjoy reading even more.
Give your students a much-needed brain break during the day with these 5 read-alouds.
Of course, reading aloud to students is one of the most effective ways to improve fluency, and it's also one of the easiest. To improve fluency during your read-aloud time, all you need are a few good books and your students' undivided attention. Once you have that, here's what to do next:

Be a good model
When reading aloud to your students, be sure to model the reading process. By hearing you use proper expression and pronunciation, your students will pick up on those cues and translate them to their own reading.

Take a time out
When reading aloud, read the book first all the way through, and then read it again, stopping in places that may pose a challenge or introduce a new concept to students. When you take a time out during reading, you'll show your students that it's okay to stop and ask questions. You can also begin teaching them how to use context clues to learn new vocabulary or understand complex topics-an important skill when it comes to reading fluency.

Encourage a role reversal
Have students work in pairs and read aloud a book from their favorite series or collection. When students are able to read aloud fluently themselves, they'll take what they've learned and apply it to their own quiet, independent reading.

Focus on specific reading skill
Read-alouds, especially ones your students already know and love, are great tools for practicing critical reading skills that will improve fluency. Sight words are often a challenge for early readers, so take the time during your read-aloud to point out sight words, using the book as an introduction to further sight word learning.

Turn your read-aloud into a performance piece
Transforming your read-aloud into full-blown performance is another great way to improve reading fluency. Choose a prepared script for your reader's theater, or better yet, adapt your own from a favorite read-aloud to give your young readers and aspiring playwrights the opportunity to bring a story to life in your classroom.

Reading aloud to your students is just one way to help your students become fluent readers. For more tips and tools for developing the next generation of strong, independent readers, check out these essential teacher resources from Scholastic.

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5 Ways to Use Read Alouds to Improve Reading Fluency

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Being able to read fluently -meaning with speed, accuracy, and expression-is an important literacy skill for students to develop. When students are able to read without stumbling over words-and with appropriate tone and expression-their comprehension will improve, and they'll enjoy reading even more. Give your students a much-needed brain break during the day with these 5 read-alouds.

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Games are used to help motivate students to work on their oral fluency. At the end of the reading game a short quiz is given to help students recall certain passages in the reading.

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Use the Reading Fluency: Apple Picking worksheet to help reinforce how reading fluency supports comprehension. I will read the first paragraph and write down two things that I learned during the reading. Next, a volunteer will read the second paragraph and record two things they learned on the board. Finally, students will pair up and read the last paragraph to each other, then rate their peers reading fluency on the Fluency Checklist.

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Using the Reading Fluency: Apple Picking worksheet, I will provide the students with a few sentences and have them practice reading fluency by reading the sentences given to them, to me. To understand their comprehension of the sentences I will encourage the students to explain the sentences in their own words.
I will also reread stories pick by the students throughout the week to help students develop automaticity, as this helps increase their reading comprehension.

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I will help my ELL students build their vocabulary by providing audio books and tapes in a listening center on the other side of the classroom. By hearing and seeing the word in context at the same time, ELL students will pick up the meaning and also gain prosody, and oral fluency.

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Audiobooks have traditionally been used with second-language learners, learning-disabled students, and struggling readers or nonreaders. In many cases, audiobooks have proven successful in helping these students to access literature and enjoy books. But they have not been widely used with average, avid, or gifted readers. This article lists the benefits of audiobooks for all students.

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I will have my ELL students use illustrations and drawings to help reduce anxiety, as well as use it as a way for them to retell the story that was read to them.

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Minds in Bloom is pleased to welcome Nikki Lubing to the blog today! Nikki has experience teaching English language learners in foreign countries, and she's written an extremely helpful post for our readers about why visuals are important for ELLs. Keep reading to learn her tips and suggestions!

Have you ever been in a full immersion foreign language class? If you have, then you understand why visuals are important for ELLs (English Language Learners). When you learn a language in an immersive environment, you feel disoriented and anxious. Visuals are important for ELLs because it reduces their anxiety, increases their comprehension, and can even help them with decoding.

Examples of Visuals

Before we discuss why visuals are important, I want you to have a good understanding of what visuals are.

Photos of key vocabulary words hanging in the classroom for each unit - be sure to have the word accompanying the photo.

For math you could have a photo of a division symbol with the word written beneath.

For social studies, you could post a photo of the Boston Tea Party with a label or a small caption.

For science you could hang a photo of types of cells and label it.

An agenda written on the whiteboard to help the student get acclimated each day

A copy of the text or book you are reading aloud so your ELL student can follow along

Clip art or photos on worksheets that accompany important concepts or vocabulary

Drawings, diagrams, or graphs that explain concepts

Allow students to draw their answers to check for comprehension (drawing a comic is always a great way to do this)

Visuals Are Important for Reducing Anxiety

School causes anxiety for many students, whether it is for social or academic reasons. English language learners experience anxiety because they are not accustomed to the culture or the language around them. They fear being teased by their peers and sometimes even by their teachers for mispronouncing words or misinterpreting content.

To understand the importance of reducing anxiety, I want you to put yourself in the student's shoes. Watch the video below to see just how difficult it is to remember a new word in a completely foreign language.

One of the Most Important Language Teaching Strategies

Helping our students doesn't just mean using strategies. It means understanding and empathizing with what they are experiencing, which is the most important strategy you can use. The video above gives you a taste of how much repetition, visuals, and kinesthetic learning is required as a complete beginner. Seeing that and experiencing it yourself is what will inspire you to implement ELL strategies, such as using visuals, in your classroom consistently.

Misconceptions about Language Learners

A misconception that many people have is that fluent English learners comprehend academic content. Their fluency in social language deceives teachers because they think that their ability to converse means that they should be able to do well academically. Advanced ELLs benefit from visuals, too. Referring to visuals in your classroom is a strategy you should remind them to use until it becomes a habit.

Remember that visuals reduce student anxiety ( for all levels of ELLs) because they will see the content you are teaching in photos and have an idea of what is going on if you post a daily agenda. If you provide plenty of visual aids throughout your lesson and on your materials it will put your ELL students at ease. They will feel more oriented and confident in your classroom.

Visuals Are Important for Comprehension

Sometimes students cannot comprehend important concepts without visuals. It's important to implement visuals at the right time. Before you start teaching or before you start reading, show some pictures of the main idea to the class. Previewing the information visually guides them throughout the lesson so that, at a minimum, they have an idea of what is being discussed and, at best, they are confident about what is being taught.

While teaching, use an anchor chart, a projector, or an Elmo (or whatever you have available to you) to write notes and show images. Even something as simple as reading directions under an Elmo while guiding your finger underneath each word is extremely useful for ELLs. Think of being lost at an amusement park or in an airport. What is the first thing you do to get oriented? You look around. You look for people, maps, and signs to guide you. That's exactly what your ELL students need throughout your lesson and throughout the school year. Without visuals they don't get that sense of relief when finding their friends or family after being lost. However, if you have the right visual aids in place, accompanied with patience and compassion, they won't reach a sense of panic while in your classroom.

Visuals Are Important for Decoding

Let's talk about reading aloud and guided reading with ELL students. In order for ELL students to make sound-symbol relationships, they need to hear and see text while reading. Do this with all ages (K to adult). If possible, read slowly or change the speed of the audio book to suit the student's needs.

Younger students will learn phonics and spelling. Older students will see language patterns and grasp grammar. You can make their reading time intentional by having them circle specific words or grammar points.

If you have newcomer ELL students in your class, then I suggest having them do something different during read aloud time because that will be well beyond their zone of proximal development. It would be a better use of their time to practice vocabulary and main ideas in a quiet space. If your student is allowed to sit in the hallway, go to the library, or work with an aid during read aloud, then I highly suggest doing that.

Additional Teaching Strategies in English

ELLs of all levels need you to implement language learning strategies for them. Teaching vocabulary strategies ( total physical response, Frayer Model, contextual reading, etc.) is a huge part of this because then they are empowered to teach themselves. Don't just do the strategy; let them know that it is a strategy so they use it while working independently.

Remind your students that learning a language is a marathon, not a sprint, and that you are there to support them throughout the process. Be patient when they become frustrated. Be their cheerleader at all times. Have high expectations based on their zone of proximal development. Never give up on them!

If you have any questions please contact me (Nikki) at ni[email protected]. You can also connect with me on Instagram @teachernikki.

Access my Top 3 ELL Teaching Tips here. This is geared toward online ESL teachers, but can be applied to a brick and mortar classroom as well.

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Minds in Bloom is pleased to welcome Nikki Lubing to the blog today! Nikki has experience teaching English language learners in foreign countries, and she's written an extremely helpful post for our readers about why visuals are important for ELLs. Keep reading to learn her tips and suggestions!

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Ask students to use a ruler or finger to follow along. Decoding is easier when students don't lose their places. Some may want to use a pen or pencil, other a piece of paper to help stay focused on the sentence.

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Drill Sight Words: Some words are more common than others and students who have a hard time with fluency will find it much easier to read when they are familiar with the vocabulary in the text. You can look for them in books, hang them in the classroom, and re-visit them regularly.

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Use printable books or worksheets so students can write, color, highlight, underline, circle all over the assignment. In small groups read through the assignment once or twice together, then with a partner, then on their own. Read again but have the students look for phonics sounds, grammar skill, or the answer to a comprehension question. Better fluency come with repeated practice.

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We're in the dog days of summer. Not many questions coming in right now - normal for periods when schools aren't in session. But the following query came to me this week from Ireland via Twitter.
Teacher question: Any link to how the Repeated Reading strategy works? How long text can be repeated, how long can text be, depends on accuracy? Shanahan's response:
This is such a basic question that I was gobsmacked by it. These are just the kinds of queries that I love to respond to on this site: Topics that many teachers assume they know about, but that often turn out to be full of surprises.

The idea of repeated reading emerged in the late 1970s ... as a result of the writings of S. Jay Samuels (1979) and Carol Chomsky (1978). They found, in separate studies, that engaging kids in repeatedly reading texts aloud improved reading ability. It was kind of a no-brainer that such approaches were beneficial by the time the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) concluded that they were (that portion of the report was written by Jay Samuels and me - and even he was a bit taken aback by how that work had proceeded since when he'd first written about it).

Multitasking is essential to good reading.

Scientific studies (e.g., LaBerge & Samuels, 1976) revealed the importance of "automaticity" to reading. Readers have to be able to decode without thinking about decoding. We only have so much thinking space available. The more cognitive space devoted to figuring out words, the less available to grasp the text's meaning.

Samuel's idea of repeated reading was that it could help readers to gain automaticity. He thought it would help readers to master the art of reading words accurately and with sufficient speed.

When children are learning to read, they initially struggle to read words accurately. That is very common in Grade 1. These students then often gain mastery over accuracy at the expense of speed - such accurate but slow reading tends to emerge in Grade 2 (Morris, 1999). Samuels' goal was to build accuracy and speed to a point where comprehension would be possible. The more efficient the reading of the words, the more that readers' attention could be turned to meaning.

Carol Chomsky (1978) had a similar notion of the problem. She thought there was a subgroup of poor readers who "knew" phonics - that is, they knew the letters and sounds and could decode words reasonably well. However, these strugglers couldn't apply these skills fluently during the reading of a text.

Chomsky believed that this special group of readers might benefit from reading texts aloud repeatedly since it would give them essential practice in applying those known skills.

Samuels and Chomsky both reported research studies that had positive results, as have many other researchers since that time.

What specifically is "Repeated Reading?"

Repeated Reading is a particular method proposed by S. Jay Samuels to develop decoding automaticity with struggling readers. In this approach, students are asked to read aloud short text passages (50-200 words) until they reach a criterion level of success (particular speed and accuracy goals).

However, research shows there are many ways that teachers can successfully exploit the idea of repeated oral reading, so I'll talk about "repeated reading" here (rather than Repeated Reading).

What are some of those other ways of doing repeated reading?

In Chomsky's scheme, the kids listened to audiotapes of a text and then worked on making their own tapes - trying to match the quality of the originals. Reading while listening or echo reading works too, as does Radio Reading (in which kids work with scripts - making the oral reading purposeful), and Neurological Impress (don't ask).

All of these schemes include oral reading. They also all include reading the texts multiple times (either to a particular quality criterion, such as a particular number of words correct per minute - or a set number of repetitions, usually 3).

What's the goal of such instruction, to get kids to read fast?

No, the goal is to get students to read the author's words accurately, to read texts at about the speed of oral language, and to make this reading sound like language (pausing in the right places so that ithe text makes sense).

What is the outcome of such practice?

Repeated reading usually leads to better reading performance. The biggest payoffs tend to be with word reading, but it also has been found to improve oral reading fluency and reading comprehension (the most frequently reported area of improvement). This comprehension finding surprised Jay Samuels. Remember the comprehension impact should be indirect - through word reading improvement. He was shocked that so many researchers failed to include word reading measures in their studies, even though they always tested reading comprehension. There was a very good chance that such studies would have found no differences in comprehension and would have, therefore, concluded that repeated reading didn't work. Fortunately, the comprehension payoffs were large enough and consistent enough that it didn't turn out to be a problem.

Were there special kids who needed repeated reading?

The research suggests that part of Chomsky's theory was wrong. Studies of repeated reading sometimes aimed at these special "average phonics skills but low reading" kids, and other times they just focused on all readers in regular classrooms. The results were exactly the same: repeated reading improved reading ability across the board.

How many re-readings should kids be doing?

The research suggests that three readings should be sufficient so I would limit it to that. Three readings and it is time to move on to another text.

How long should the passages be?

Samuels used passages of 50-200 words; with the shorter texts used with the students with the lowest reading abilities. That makes sense to me. In classroom reading practice, that would be like a page or two in a primary grade reader. It is important to keep the texts brief for this work so that when students reread, memory becomes a useful scaffold. The longer the text, the harder to carry over what was figured out on the first reading. (Joe Torgesen has emphasized the importance of using texts that share a lot of vocabulary. That way, when a student improves with one text, it is certain to immediately carry over to the next.)

How challenging should the texts be?

The texts used for fluency practice should be at students' so-called "frustration levels." If students don't make many mistakes with a text (say 10 or more per hundred words), then the repetition is unlikely to improve their reading very much.

What about integrating comprehension work into this kind of fluency practice?

Some of the repeated reading routines have included a comprehension component, such as asking students a different question at the conclusion of each reading or having the student complete some kind of comprehension task each time. Other approaches do not do this. The research says that repeated reading pays off, whether there is a comprehension step or not. I'd include one under the well-known scientific precept: "It couldn't hurt."

How can a teacher listen to a whole classroom full of kids?

I recommend paired reading. Have one youngster read to another. Then they switch. While this practice is going on, the teacher circulates among the students listening to several one-at-a-time and giving feedback.

What about silent reading?

Silent reading should also take place regularly - I try to provide both an oral reading fluency period and a reading comprehension period daily. In the latter, except with beginners, the reading is silent. There are also a couple of studies in which kids read silently while a computer monitored their reading that has led to fluency improvement (Rasinski, Samuels, Hiebert, Petcher, & Feller, 2011).

What about round robin reading? We do "popcorn" in my class?

Schemes in which one child reads aloud and the rest of the students wait their turn are lousy. They don't allow much oral reading; simply not enough practice to foster improvement. This is because only one child reads at a time. Second, repeated reading is very rare in round robin, making learning unlikely. Third, you may get pushback; kids who read poorly may refuse to read - something that never occurs when everyone is doing the reading.

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Everything You Wanted to Know about Repeated Reading | Reading Rockets

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We're in the dog days of summer. Not many questions coming in right now - normal for periods when schools aren't in session. But the following query came to me this week from Ireland via Twitter. Teacher question: Any link to how the Repeated Reading strategy works?

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Will provide vocabulary cards so students can pick key words from assignment to go over. This strategy will help the students learn the spelling, meaning, and grammatical function of new vocabulary. Students can use dictionaries or online dictionaries to figure out the meaning of their chosen vocabulary words.