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Jessica Christensen                       

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Jessica Christensen                       

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What are the basic components of fluency?
-The 2 components of fluency are automaticity, which is the ability to recognize a word and measures speed and accuracy, and prosody, which is reading with expression which makes the text more meaningful.

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?
-While both automaticity and prosody are important, I feel that it is most feasible to focus on prosody. As the Rasinsky video states, too many teachers focus on a student's speed when measuring reading progress. It is important for teachers to model and have students practice how to make their reading more expressive. This helps text to come alive, which also helps with comprehension. Just because a student has the ability to "speed read" does not mean he/she comprehends the material.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples.
-In science, fluency is an important component due to the fact that it is so vocabulary-rich. During every new unit, students are learning new words which can hinder comprehension of the text. It is important to combine vocabulary lessons with fluency practice in order to increase comprehension. Often, I will model how to pronounce new vocabulary by reading a passage aloud and then having the students participate in repeated reading. Following this type of lesson, I usually have students work in heterogeneous groups, taking turns reading aloud to their peers to become familiar with the vocabulary and build fluency as well as comprehension. This type of assignment helps students to improve both components of fluency: automaticity and fluency.
To make the experience of increasing fluency more authentic in the area of science, be sure to incorporate the following into lessons:
-Modeling
-Repeated reading
-Group work
-Using meaningful text
-Vocabulary mini-lessons
-Student presentations

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What are the basic components of fluency?

Two basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody. Automaticity should require minimal effort. Students should be able to quickly, effortlessly, and accurately decode words. Prosody has less to do with speed and focuses more on the readers ability to read a text with a variety of expressions. Prosody essentially gives life to a text.

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

The most feasible building block to implement into my content area is automaticity. Many students with learning disabilities and ELLs struggle with sight words. Much of their effort goes into decoding, which distracts them from the ultimate goal of comprehending the text.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area?

To make the experience authentic in my content area I would choose texts that engaged students. For example, choosing a young adult book that appeals to the student's interests, but is at a reading level that they can practice automaticity. The more a student is motivated to read, the more practice they will have improving on key skills that make readers fluent. Another example is creating opportunities for students to practice automaticity as they read aloud. Within the class students are assigned to a book club based on their interests and reading level. Students get into their book clubs (4-5 students) and take turns reading aloud. Practicing automaticity through silent reading is equally important as practicing it aloud.

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What are the basic components of fluency?

The basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody. When evaluating a students’ fluency the focus should be on automaticity and prosody. Automaticity focuses on a reader's ability to identify and decode words automatically. Prosody focuses on a reader’s ability to read with expression.

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

The building block which would be most feasible in my content area, social studies, would be modeling fluent/expressive reading. When selecting text for my class I will assure the text is interesting, relatable and expressive. As an educator, I believe the most effective technique is modeling within a special education classroom. The content area of social studies incorporates various texts for students. Students will refer to speeches, reports, textbooks etc. For example, I will assign the Malcom X “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “ I Have a Dream” speech. I will model to the students’ how both speeches were delivered to their audiences. The purpose of modeling excerpts from each speech is to demonstrate fluent reading, as well as expression within reading.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples

Within my classroom, I continuously used the following to assure fluency with material:

Opportunities for share-outs, presentations etc.

Heterogeneous group work

Chunking material

Assigning skill appropriate text

Assuring the text is culturally responsive

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What are the basic components of fluency?
Automaticity is the reader's ability to recognize and decode words automatically.  Prosody refers to the ability to read with expression. Both automaticity
and prosody are equally important when assessing a student's fluency.
Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?
As a special education teacher, specifically teaching ELA and SS, I am most concerned with students automaticity. In SS, I choose 6-8 vocabulary words per unit to study, in hopes that my most struggling readers will begin to recognize these higher level words as sight words. In
ELA, we implemented weekly Glass Analysis direct phonics instruction, to help students improve their ability to decode common word families (ing, et, at, it)
How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples
In Social Studies, we read weekly Current Events articles (2-3 pages, 4th grade level text). To help students improve comprehension, we read this together, most commonly the teacher reading a paragraph out loud, and pausing for students to write down some type of comprehension organizer. To improve my students' fluency, I am now considering splitting the students into small groups, where the teacher reads the paragraph first (modeling fluent reading), the students follow along, and then the student repeats the same section.  Especially for shorter paragraphs and articles, I think this would improve both fluency and comprehension of complex issues/concepts.

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What are the basic components of fluency?

The basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody.  Automaticity is the automatic recognition of a word and requires little energy to decode the words.  Prosody is the expressive nature in which a person reads with fluency, accuracy, and appropriate speed.  Essentially, it is the person’s ability to change their voice as they read.

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

The building block that would be most feasible in my content area is modeling fluent and expressive reading.  In U.S. history, famous speeches and primary sources have been written, which has captivated, inspired, and engaged us to keep reading what the historical figure was saying about a particular issue.  By reading these speeches and primary source material in your best acting voice, students can decipher the meaning of the words through your tone and overall prosody.  This building block can engage student to see how you as the teacher reads a particular text, while also allowing the student to simultaneously learn the material in an interesting fashion.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples

I think the best way to make the experience authentic is to allow students to engage with primary texts from U.S. history that exhibit and invoke different emotions (passionate, somber, angry, crazy, and scared to list a few) so that students know how they should be reading the text with their “historian eyes, brain, and mouth.”  Having the students read out loud speeches from U.S. presidents, letters from MLK, women suffragists, or protestors of the Vietnam War, you put the student at the center stage to embrace that role and let their creativity dictate how they read the text.  Fluency comes with practice and constructive feedback, so modeling how to read with prosody and giving them a creative outlet to practice reading with fluency is a great way to incorporate this aspect into a history curriculum.

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What are the basic components of fluency?

The two basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody. Automaticity is a readers ability to recognize a word while prosody is a readers ability to express the right mood and tone of a text while reading out loud. Automaticity is usually measured by the speed and accuracy of the reader while prosody adds to the meaning of the text and can assess a readers ability to comprehend a given text.

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

In my content area, the most feasible building block that could be implemented would be modeling fluent/expressive reading. In the resource room, I primarily help students with long readings in order to help them implement comprehension skills while reading it but we could also shift the focus for some lessons on fluency.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples

Any time they are given an assignment of a reading text we could incorporate modeling fluent and expressive reading. Eventually the students would hopefully take turns reading in order practice reading fluency.

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What are the basic components of fluency?

The two basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody. Automaticity means the ability to automatically recall and recognize words. This is usually measured in speed and accuracy. It is focused on the recognition of the word rather than the accuracy of the word.  Prosody is the expressiveness in your voice while reading. By doing this, it adds meaning to the reading.

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

As an ELA teacher, the most important thing is to improve silent reading comprehension. Most kids can comprehend a text if it is read to them, but when you ask for them to read and answer comprehension questions that directly relate to the text, it usually becomes much harder. To do this, I believe it is important for students to understand the expressiveness or tone in a text. As a teacher I always tell my students that the tone creates the mood of a text. Understanding the tone can completely alter your understanding of the text.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples

To improve reading comprehension it is important to clunk the text into different sections to help the students. It is also important to read to your students. If you want your students to understand the expressiveness of a text, you have to model it for your students. By modeling you are showing your students how an expressive reader reads.

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1. What are the basic components of fluency?

The basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody. Specifically, automaticity is the speed and accuracy in word reading and recognition, while prosody refers to expressiveness in oral reading, appropriate variation of rate, intonation, and phrasing.

2. Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

The building block mentioned that seems most feasible in my ELA class would be modeling fluent/expressive reading. This is because in my ELA class, we can look at a poem or a short story together and implement read aloud. I would begin by reading the first page to them in a fluent and expressive manner so students can learn and attain metacognitive awareness of what fluency is. It will allow me to explain how and why I read a certain way to help them comprehend the text better.

3. How can you make the experience authentic in your content area?

I already apply this portion of the building block in my classroom. I always begin by reading the text out-loud, then stopping after each paragraph to explain what we read and annotate important details. After I model it for them, we do guided practice where students can volunteer to read. Then, I would ask for other students to input their think out loud so we can annotate the text together. Afterwards, they would do it independently. Nonetheless, we always talk about the importance of reading aloud because it is important for enhancing their comprehension skill.

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What are the basic components of fluency?

·      Automaticity in Word Recognition- recognize words automatically; too much energy spent on recognizing or decoding the words impacts a students’ ability to comprehend a text.

·      Prosody (Expressiveness in Reading)- not someone who reads fast but someone who uses their voice to give meaning to the text they are reading. Adding meaning by changing their voice.

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

·      Meaningful Reading Using Real Literature (poetry, materials read with expression)

·      Support in Word Recognition, word ladder books how they sound and what they mean

·      Model Fluent/Expressive Reading, read to the students in fluent and expressive manner, model how to do it. Talk to students about your reading you give students a metacognitive awareness of what fluency is.

·      Assisted Reading- like learning how to ride a bike; someone to assist you in reading until you can read on your own. Forms of assisted reading: Choral Reading; group of students read together with the teacher at the same time to acquire reading abilities, Paired Reading; similar to choral reading only done with two people. Both people read together out loud. Captioned Television; watches television while reading the caption is a form of assisted reading. Technology; cd or tape recorder of the book or text.

·      Practice-Wide and Deep-Wide reading: once you read something you might talk about it with someone, might do an activity with the students but you move on to another reading, end up not reading the text well. Deep Reading: read something more than once until you read it well and understand, technical term is Repeated reading.

The building block mentioned that seems most feasible in a content area I could teach would be Model Fluent/Expressive Reading. I think this building block will be very helpful in both ELA and SS. In ELA when reading a poem for example it is important for the students to hear how to accurately read the poem. Modelling it for them will facilitate how they should do it themselves. In SS when reading a speech, for example I have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr. A teacher must model and discuss how to use expression when reading the speech.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples

The way I can make the experience authentic is by providing readings that the students can relate to. Also have them read things that they can make a connection with on a personal level. This will help them with reading expressively. They will channel in their expression from their experiences to the text and how they should read it.

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1. The basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody. Automaticity refers to speed and accuracy in word reading and recognition. Prosody refers to appropriate variation of rate, reading in meaningful phrase groupings, and other vocal variations that indicate an understanding of the meaning of the text, including following punctuation.

2. Prosody, via modeling fluent reading and choral reading, seems most feasible in my content area, currently science. While we might not typically do much choral reading in a science class, I like to forefront scientific literacy in my classroom. In this context, we read news articles and listen to podcast, and I could easily fit in recording our own podcasts and other ways of modeling and practicing good prosody in fluent reading.

3. As explained in (2), I could do many of the same things an English/ELA teacher would do, because I use news articles in my science class. I could have students bring in a favorite news item related to science and do a "morning announcement" explaining that item in an announcer's way, or I could do choral reading of short creative nonfiction passages. I might also be able to model fluent reading even with science textbook reading, since that would make the textbook "come alive" and make it clear that science is not just about dull facts from the book. This could go along with genre work about author's purpose and text features in writing science textbooks.

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1. What are the basic components of fluency?

The basic components of fluency are automaticity and prosody. This means that students can read text efficiently and with little effort, as well as using expression to enhance comprehension.

2. Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

I think that practicing repeated reading would be the most feasible in my content area, science. enhance comprehension. So much research, not just Rasinsky, backs up the idea that repeated exposure to text, vocabulary, or a concept is key to students, especially students with learning disabilities like my students, actually retain the information and truly comprehend it. It also aids fluency, as repeated readings get students more comfortable with the material, especially in science text, in which the language is different than that which students generally experience.

3. How can you make the experience authentic in your content area?

I would be able to make it authentic in my content area in two ways. One way, I already do. We read a chunk of text on a new topic one day, which we practice assisted reading. The next day, we re-read the text, underline important points, and take notes. I would also be able to have students read to their lab partners or in small groups, and then as a class, or visa versa.

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1. What are the basic components of fluency?

The basic components of fluency are are automaticity and word recognition, prosody, accuracy and speed, expression, intonation and phrasing.

2. Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?

The building block that would be most feasible in my content area would be assisted reading. This building block can be scaffolded and differentiated for any student. Different level readers can work individually or in groups by reading aloud, which will improve their oral language and fluency skills. Dedicating just 20 minutes to oral/group reading can make the difference in improving a students overall comprehension and fluency skills.This building block can also be incorporated/scaffolded with technology. Providing students with audio books can provide a visual and audio version for students to interact with in reading.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area?

I would be able to make the experience authentic in my content area by incorporating interactive books that align with my students hobbies or interest. These interactive books will allow my students to engage within groups to discuss their readings, have a chance to explain their interest to another student and reciprocal teach their interactive book, and will show a higher interest and motivation to read. Students will be able read independently, but will have to use there findings within the book to present what they have read in front of the class. This will promote oral language and comprehension. If the teacher thinks the student is working independently for too long, he can encourage them to find a classmate and discuss to him/her what their book is about and begin to reciprocal teach. I think by only dedicating 20-30 min of class time every day, this will severely improve students prosody, reading fluency, and reading comprehension skills.