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Develop critical analysis of media skills

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Performance Level Descriptors

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Bookmarks with question stems related to common core standards

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Lucy Calkins and Colleagues Units of Study

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This grade 5 booklet will help you identify the many ways that the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Grade 5 support English language development with a detailed description of which CA ELD standards are taught in each session. These booklets also offer ways teachers can adapt instruction in the Units of Study to make them even more helpful.

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This grade 5 booklet will help you identify the many ways that the Units of Study for Teaching Reading, Grade 5 support English language development with a detailed description of which CA ELD standards are taught in each session. These booklets also offer ways teachers can adapt instruction in the Units of Study to make them even more helpful.

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Welcome to the Unbounded ELA Guide series! These guides are designed to explain what the new, high standards for ELA say about what students should learn in each grade, what they mean for curriculum and instruction, and how we can implement teaching practices that support them. This guide, which focuses on fluency in Grades 6-12, demonstrates how fluency practice can be integrated into ELA and instruction across content areas. It includes four parts. The first part defines reading fluency and why it is important for overall reading proficiency. The second part provides insight into how fluency can be fostered within thoughtfully structured ELA instruction. The third part provides proven and practical activities, framed by the expectations of the standards, that can be integrated into the ELA block. And the fourth part provides guidance on how many of these activities can be used to support fluency beyond the ELA Block.

Why do we focus on fluency? Nearly two-thirds of U.S. students in grades 4, 8 and 12 cannot read proficiently. This isn't a new problem, either: Only a small increase in the percentage of proficient readers has occurred in the last 25 years. http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading The stakes have never been higher, though, as it's increasingly difficult to meet the demands of college coursework and a range of careers without sophisticated reading and writing skills. The specificity and rigor of the new standards provide us with an opportunity to turn this tide, though-improving reading proficiency and life prospects for all students.

What is fluency?

It's likely that you have worked with students who stumble over words, sound them out very slowly, or read them too quickly in a robotic, monotone voice. These are examples of disfluent reading, and often indicate that these students are struggling with one or more of the characteristics of fluency. Fluency refers to how smoothly an individual reads and is defined by three characteristics:

1. Accurate decoding and word recognition.

2. Reading at a conversational pace.

3. Reading with appropriate prosody, or expression.

Why is Fluency Important?

Fluency is a critical link between decoding and comprehension. Although fluent reading doesn't guarantee comprehension, we know that disfluent reading hinders comprehension, especially with complex texts. Disfluent readers, instead of being able to make meaning as they read, spend a disproportionate amount of cognitive capacity sounding out words or wrestling with sentence structure, leaving little time and energy to actually comprehend what they're reading.

The good news is that fluency is an element of reading that can be improved relatively quickly with some attention and practice.

The good news is that fluency is an element of reading that can be improved relatively quickly with some attention and practice. We can work on building fluency during existing lessons, with few additional resources. The heaviest lift lies in planning to make time for a routine in which fluency instruction and practice is intentional and frequent.

Before we explore how to build fluency, let's consider elements of fluency in a bit more detail. As fluent readers ourselves, we have developed automatic and accurate recognition of a great many words, and the ability to quickly sound out (or attack) those that we don't automatically recognize. This automaticity allows us to maintain a conversational pace as we read. As fluent readers, we also understand intrinsically how to use intonation, pauses, stops, phrasing and inflection so our reading sounds as though we are speaking naturally to a friend. Our foundation of vocabulary and background knowledge provides support to help us make meaning of the text. These components that we rarely think about when reading are the foundations on which students' reading fluency rests. To grow and improve students' reading fluency, our goals must include:

Reading fluency can change with text content, genre or complexity, so we must continue to provide fluency practice for our students-beyond the elementary grades.

Reading fluency can change with text content, genre or complexity, so we must continue to provide fluency practice for our students-beyond the elementary grades. We can achieve the goals above by integrating activities and teaching practices that target fluency into the context of the work we do within complex, grade-level texts. For struggling readers, it may feel counterintuitive to use grade-level texts, but this is the most effective approach to building fluency for students at all levels. Using grade-level (versus reading-level) texts will require us to move more slowly, but the support that accompanies fluency work-rereading, modeling and feedback-will help all students access the rigor of these grade-level texts. We will approach our fluency work through modeled readings, shared readings and repeated readings, which will allow us to support students' productive struggle with the text. This shared struggle is designed to culminate in shared comprehension and success. Using complex, grade-level texts allows us to maximize gains within the short time we share with our students each day.

Let's begin by looking at fluency expectations. Then we'll look at some activities we can use to support fluency using complex, grade-level texts. We'll provide examples of where these activities can be included in lessons conducted with a variety of open educational resources (OER). Appendix A includes steps for how to conduct each activity or practice.

Standards Expectations

We don't find any standards for Grades 6-12 that explicitly address fluency, as the expectation is that students arrive to these grades having already developed it. However, as previously mentioned, fluency can change with text content, genre or complexity. So it's important that we continue to provide models of what fluent reading sounds like and practices that allow our students to improve their own fluency. It is also important to recognize that the standards that we do address in these grades are inextricably intertwined with fluency. In order to read the range, quality and complexity of texts demanded by the standards, our students will need to develop insight into knowledge of language (ELA.RA.L.3) and structure of texts, (ELA.RA.R.5) which will also assist their understanding of the expression with which the texts are to be read. They'll have to develop background knowledge to fully understand the ideas expressed through text. With this background knowledge comes vocabulary (ELA.RA.L.4) - the development of which contributes to our students' ability to automatically and accurately recognize words, another key element of fluency. Finally, exposure to the range of genres exemplified by the standards (ELA.RA.R.10) will foster in our students greater understanding of how each has its own appropriate pace and cadence of reading. While we address the standards, we provide conditions for improving fluency. By explicitly targeting fluency in our instruction, we support students' comprehension of the texts they read.

Strategic word attack to build fluency

Before we look at strategies that practice incorporating all of the elements of fluency, let's first take a look at how we can strengthen our students' word attack skills. Remember, fluency requires automatic word recognition, and the ability to quickly "attack," or figure out, words that are not immediately recognized.

We can teach our students to analyze syllables and word parts by explicitly teaching them the six syllable types (see "The Glorious Whitewasher" example below) and providing them with practice blending and segmenting known syllables to form and read words, phrases and sentences created from those syllables. We need to teach our students to look for meaningful chunks in unknown words. Understanding how to break words into syllables will aid them in pronunciation of words that they do not recognize.

Our students who struggle in reading often have trouble with multisyllabic words. For struggling students, these word attack skills are critical if we want them to make progress. For some students, this may require systematic, intentional intervention beyond the ELA classroom. During ELA, however, our struggling readers can benefit from instruction and practice in recognizing the spelling patterns that comprise syllables and morphemes (meaningful word parts, like prefixes and suffixes), improvement of which can improve the automaticity with which words are decoded and recognized.

Analyzing Syllables

Syllable instruction and practice as part of a routine, will allow us to strengthen students' ability to quickly figure out unknown words. The grade-level text you are currently using in class can be used as a resource to reinforce how to divide words into syllables, analyze them and blend them again to read them. This blending and segmenting practice with known words will support students' ability to apply the analysis to unknown words.

When to use syllabic analysis:

Explicitly teach students the six syllable types and rules for segmenting words based on the syllable, providing additional practice opportunities for struggling readers as often as possible.

Texts to use:

Understanding the meaningful parts of words (morphemes) helps both strong and struggling readers to determine or infer word meanings. When they learn about prefixes and suffixes, they begin to understand that there are word parts that have common meaning across words. Knowledge of these word parts will support both decoding and comprehension and, with enough practice, recognition of words. Targeting these word parts can be quite efficient: The seven most common prefixes account for 70 percent of prefixed words in printed English texts for Grades 3 through 9:

The meanings of suffixes are often less concrete, but are more frequently used in students' oral language, so learning to recognize them, with instruction and practice, can also be a powerful step toward fluency (and for proficient students, support additional vocabulary acquisition). Again, when we teach a small number of these suffixes, we build students' ability to apply meaning to many words. The five most frequent suffixes account for 75 percent of suffixed words in printed English texts for Grades 3 through 9:

When we provide students skills that help them to recognize, decode and understand the most common syllable patterns and affixes, we provide them with word-attack skills that will help them to read words comprised of those parts. By strategically focusing our work on the affixes that appear most often, we can maximize results in the limited time that we have with students.

When to use morphological analysis:

Explicitly teach students common root, base and compound words, along with common prefixes and suffixes during ELA class, providing additional practice opportunities for struggling readers as often as possible.

Subsequently, choose words from the text that will enhance the meaning of what students are reading.

Multiple exposures to these target words will support memory and retrieval, expanding the student's repertoire of recognized words.

Texts to use:

Choose g rade-level texts and passages from grade-level texts that you are using in your classroom instruction.

CCSS Exemplar Text: From Tom Sawyer, "The Glorious Whitewasher"

Launching To Kill a Mockingbird: Establishing Reading Routines (Chapter 1)

Rereading passages and repeated reading of previously read grade-level texts will help students to recognize words and spellings. The more repetitions, the more recognition. Rereading is also an excellent strategy for helping students to comprehend increasingly complex grade-level texts, particularly when we pair rereading with discussion and scaffolding.

Sharing the text to support fluency

As ELA teachers, most of us would agree that great and rich texts deserve to be read more than once: Every time we go back to our favorite work, we have the opportunity to get something new from it. Several strategies for increasing fluency involve rereading:

Masterful Reading (Modeling)

When we read aloud-masterfully-to students, we can both model pronunciation and emphasize appropriate expression and pace. We can use read-alouds to draw our students' attention to changes in the way a text is read. Some of our students may not really know how elements in the the text cue fluency. This is one of the reasons why a masterful read-aloud to explicitly model (and discuss) what fluent reading sounds like is helpful. As we read, we can also draw our students' attention to and discuss the relationship between text structures, word choice, syntax and meaning. This allows us to foster in our students a habit of paying attention to language and not just the individual words in the text. This modeling will help our students imagine what their own reading is supposed to sound like. It is important that we give our students multiple opportunities to reread the passages that we model.

When to use masterful read-alouds:

Texts to use:

Developing Core Proficiencies English Language Arts / Literacy Unit"The wolf you feed"

© 2015 Odell Education

To facilitate meaningful discussion, we need to assess which parts of the text will challenge our students. These are the clauses, phrases and vocabulary that we must highlight, model and discuss.

Text-Based Discussions

Much of our work in Grades 6-12 will involve text-based discussions. We'll use these discussions to dissect complex texts with our students, to ensure understanding of both the text and the meaning. To facilitate meaningful discussion, we need to assess which parts of the text will challenge our students. These are the clauses, phrases and vocabulary that we must highlight, model and discuss. For instance, by making sure that our discussion includes talking about text features that cue changes in expression and pace, we help our students build fluency and understanding at the same time. Don't forget conversations about vocabulary-identifying morphological origins of words will support students' word recognition and understanding. Point out how words are grouped to form meaningful phrases that change the pace and expression with which they are read.

For our struggling readers, select words from the text to practice syllable and affix word attack skills. We can help our students to better understand by having them practice parsing and chunking complex (juicy) sentences into their meaningful parts. Make sure these sentences and passages are read more than once, to strengthen both meaning-making and development of fluency. Having students shift their intonation and expression each time they read the sentence or passage can help them to understand how expression, called prosody, can change the interpretation of the sentence or passage. With practice, a reader with good prosody can use his or her skill to experiment or problem solve in order to find the intonation and expression that applies the correct meaning to an otherwise confusing phrase.

When to use text-based discussions:

Texts to use:

To learn more about facilitating discussions and sentence deconstruction, see What Does Text Complexity Mean For English Learners And Language Minority Students? by Lily Wong Fillmore & Charles J. Fillmore.

United States. Preamble to the United States Constitution.

U.S. Constitution, pmbl.

Oral Reading

One of the easiest ways we can provide our students with practice and assess their progress in fluency is to listen to them read orally and to make sure that they have opportunities to listen to good examples of fluent oral reading. The oral reading activities described below provide models of what fluent reading sounds like, engaging all students in the task, and protecting weak readers from the embarrassment that comes from round-robin and popcorn reading. The activities below can be used individually, or in combination with one another to provide students with multiple opportunities to orally reread the same text.

Choral Reading

Model pronunciation, pace and expression while reading a passage to the class or group, then read the same passage in unison, with the students. Choral reading provides students with a model of fluent reading and a gradual release from group reading to independent reading of the passage. Repeat the choral reading over several days to increase students' fluent reading. As the week progresses, gradually release responsibility to transfer reading to our class.

When to use choral reading:

Use this activity to introduce an introductory excerpt from the first text about a new topic (for topically related text sets) or to introduce new genres.

Use this activity to introduce and practice pace and expression for poetry.

Assign choral reading passages as homework (repeated oral reading) after choral reading takes place.

Texts to use:

Choose p assages from texts used for instruction 2-3 minutes long (approximately 150-300 words), including:

Complex texts at or slightly above grade-level for shared/supported reading.

New or previously read texts or passages.

Reader's Theater

For reader's theater, students rehearse reading of a text containing parts for multiple readers in preparation for oral presentation. Be sure that presentations are expressive oral readings and not memorizations of the text. It can be tempting to have students memorize scripts and poems, but for the purposes of fluency practice, it is the reading that is important.

When to use Reader's Theater:

Texts to use:

Choose g rade-level texts that provide an authentic purpose for presentation such as poems, plays, personal letters, speeches and narrative texts that include dialogue.

A Choral and Dramatic Reading of Macbeth

© 2014 Public Consulting Group

Repeated Oral Reading

Repeated reading of previously read grade-level texts helps students recognize words and spellings. The repetition from rereading provides great practice and new learning. It is also an excellent strategy for helping students to comprehend increasingly complex grade-level texts. Repeated reading provides our students with increasing familiarity with the text-its words and its literary and syntactical features.

When to use repeated oral reading:

Texts to use:

Choose c omplex grade-level texts for shared / supported reading.

Use selections from texts are being used for instruction, or use the topic related texts.

Partner Reading

Partner reading is a strategy that allows your students to provide support to one another. Pair students to practice reading orally to one another, alternating sentences, paragraphs or pages. Provide guidance for students regarding how and when to correct one another. In doing so, more proficient readers will model for their peers important elements of fluent reading including pace, expression and self-correction. In turn, the more proficient readers will gain reading exposure that continues to strengthen and grow their own fluency. We can also conduct a "whisper" partner reading, where students read to one another in pairs or small groups at a whisper level. Whisper reading will create a less distracting background if small group work is being conducted at the same time as partner reading. In either case, circulate through the groups or partnerships, to assess students' fluency.

When to conduct partner reading:

Allow students to read to one another during small group work with other student or while rotating to monitor progress.

Texts to use:

Choose g rade-level texts that are the focus of instruction.

"St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell

© 2014 Public Consulting Group

Sets of Texts on Related Topics

Reading sets of texts on a related topic across subsequent days supports fluency by reinforcing vocabulary and content. Two or more authors writing about the same topic will use many of the same words, and this repeated exposure builds vocabulary and content knowledge, which supports the development of fluency and comprehension.

It is important for us to make the distinction between topically related and theme-based texts. Although themes, like struggle, friendship and heroism, can connect texts, these texts won't likely include much overlap in vocabulary. The theme itself may have some vocabulary associated with it (e.g., hero, villain, courage), but the texts likely will be about different situations or characters representing the theme. Topics, or domains of knowledge, on the other hand, bring with them the vocabulary of the topic (e.g., the topic plants has a common vocabulary of root, leaf, stem, photosynthesis, nutrient, etc).

Occasionally reading aloud from sets of related texts will support our students' development of language, vocabulary and content. This repetition supports word recognition for shared and independent reading. These text sets provide benefits similar to repeated reading-increased exposure to and repetition of a set of common words, but also offer the benefit of allowing our students to read a different text rather than rereading the same text.

When to use related texts:

Texts to use:

Intervention and support for struggling readers must include opportunities to read and must not come at the expense of interaction with grade-level texts or knowledge- and vocabulary-building content.

A Note about Struggling Readers

Students who are reading behind grade level need many opportunities to engage in a volume of reading that includes a wide variety of genre and topics. Remember, it takes a repeated exposure to a large amount of text to acquire a deep inventory of words that are instantly recognized. This additional reading also deepens the reader's knowledge of the world, which increases comprehension. Unfortunately, struggling students-as a result of their poor reading-often lack the motivation to engage in the amount of reading that will, in turn, improve their reading. It is incumbent upon us, across all content areas, to find ways to support and encourage reading throughout the day. This additional reading (i.e., reading beyond the texts we are teaching) can be guided or not, it can include reading-level texts as well as those above the students' reading levels, and it can be fueled by interest to the reader. Intervention and support for struggling readers must include opportunities to read and must not come at the expense of interaction with grade-level texts or knowledge and vocabulary building content.

The standards call for an increasing balance of fiction and nonfiction, and not just in the ELA block, but other parts of the school day as well. Some of the nonfiction reading can take place in the social studies and science blocks. We can use reading of content area texts as opportunities to include additional lessons and activities build students' reading fluency. Many of the same activities and practices can be used to support fluency in the content areas, with minimal shifts and nuance.

Modeling Fluent Reading of Text

Use read-alouds of content area texts to emphasize expression and pace while reading aloud during social studies and science. Through read-alouds you can introduce new topics and model pronunciation of related content area vocabulary before students have to read these words on their own. This gives students a solid footing for their independent and scaffolded reading about the content.

Sets of Text on Related Topics

Use a variety of books, articles, digital sources, etc. about content area topics of study to provide exposure that reinforces common vocabulary and concepts through different texts. Reading across texts about the same topic will support development or word recognition along with content knowledge.

Text-based Discussions

Engage students in discussions about complex sentences, text structure and new vocabulary found in content area texts. Parse complex sentences into their component parts, having students describe the meaning in of each part in their own words. Be sure to bring closure to the conversation by allowing students to put the component parts back together, discussing meaning based on their new understanding of the component parts of the sentence.

Also have students reread complex sentences and passages as part of text-based discussions aimed at eliciting meaning from the text.

Repeated Oral Reading

Assign a passage from the text as homework to be read aloud nightly, at home-or provide such text, related to subject area content, to ELA teachers for their use.

Choral Reading

Use choral reading to introduce an introductory excerpt from the first text about a new topic (for topically related text sets). This passage can also be assigned as homework (repeated oral reading) after choral reading takes place.

Reader's Theater

Use reader's theater for content area texts, like speeches, plays and poetry, allowing rehearsal time in class or at home. Have all students prepare for presentation, even if time doesn't permit individual presentations. Different students can present each time this activity is used.

As we said at the outset of this guide, fluency is an element of reading proficiency that can be improved relatively quickly with little in the way of additional time and resources. A few last things before you embark on targeting reading fluency:

Frequency is important-embed fluency activities into lessons within and beyond the ELA block as often as you can. With attention and practice, fluency can be improved for most readers.

Fluency changes with text complexity, context or genre-that is, students who read one text fluently may not read another type of text with the same level of fluency. Supporting fluency is an ongoing endeavor, rather than a goal that is achieved.

Intervention and support for struggling readers must include opportunities to read and must not come at the expense of interaction with grade-level texts or knowledge and vocabulary building content.

Providing topically related sets of texts

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Building Fluency: Unbound A Guide to 6-12 ELA/Literacy Practices

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Welcome to the Unbounded ELA Guide series! These guides are designed to explain what the new, high standards for ELA say about what students should learn in each grade, what they mean for curriculum and instruction, and how we can implement teaching practices that support them.

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Rewordify.com | Understand what you read

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Rewordify.com helps you read more, understand better, learn new words, and teach more effectively.

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