3. How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples
- Along with read-alouds and conferencing, I use numerous online programs to help my students' knowledge of both the surface and deeper level fluency skills. One program that my class uses in particular is called MaxScholar. In MaxScholar, students access a series of phonics activities where they can identify the correct pronunciation of letters, trace the word digitally, and visualize letters in a series of activities. There is also a reading comprehension program where my students are able to access high-interest readings at their reading and lexile levels, where they are learning how to identify the topic/main idea/details, highlight key ideas, and create outlines summaries of the text. Lastly, there is also MaxWords, where students are constantly gaining exposure to new words through online vocabulary games.

Raskinski mentions that the basic components of fluency include automatic word recognition, reading with expression and meaning, and reading comprehension.  

 

Fluency is a bridge between word recognition and comprehension

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

One of the building blocks that seem most feasible is modeling fluent/expressive reading. Working in a school where students are all English Language Learners, it is important that students see how a text should be read with meaning and expression so that students build their fluency. Whenever there is a text to be read, I begin by reading aloud and modeling how the text should be read, and then I give different students to opportunity to practice and develop fluency as well as word recognition. 

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

I make the experience authentic by incorporating read alouds, repetition when it comes to students who are having difficulty reading, and direct feedback and interference while students read aloud. 

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?
The building blocks of fluency are meaningful reading using real literature, support in word recognition, modeling fluent/expressive reading, assisted reading, and practice - wide and deep.I teach both ELA and Math. It seems extremely feasible to model fluent/expressive reading in ELA by reading to my students and model metacognitive thinking while I read. This does help my students better understand what is happening in the text. I think I can begin drawing attention to my expressiveness in reading throughout class. I think it also is possible to have my students practice reading "wide and deep" by reading things multiple times. This can be done in small literature groups in my ELA class.

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples.
I can make the experience authentic in my content area by giving my students more literature to read and less informational text. I can incorporate material that is meant to be read with expressiveness, such as poems, songs, and "real" literature and begin incorporating activities such as Reader's Theater into my classes. There may even be a way to create a story for math word problems for my students that will give them a chance there to practice reading and understanding those problems.

According to Rasinky’s webinar the basic components of fluency are:  Automatic word recognition, or automaticity in word recognition- this refers to students being able to recognize and sound the words without taking a long time or tries to phonetically sound the word correctly.   And reading with expression, this talks about the student to have a basic understanding of the words in the contexts presented.

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

As a special education teacher I think both of the components are important for any content area in any grade level.  But I think the decoding of words, part of automaticity in word recognition is the most feasible in my Global History ICT classrooms. Especially because students would need those words to create written pieces. The decoding of words is really important in all content areas, but it can be more easily introduce since there are several exercises of prior knowledge that can help with the decoding of content specific, or even tier 2- tier 3 words.

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

I think teaching fluency would be hard in my ICT classrooms as the lessons are teacher-led, almost lecture like in which students can only ask questions and/or write notes presented in power point. If my co-teachers were more open to it, I think social sciences is one of the easiest subjects to teach reading fluency. With many poems, short stories, and in general countless documents and primary sources can be added to the lesson to strengthen students fluency. Since the documents are related to the lessons, it wont feel forced. Also, this way it will be related to history and students will be more engage in the lesson overall. 

Which of the building blocks mentioned seems most feasible in your content area?
- In Algebra and Geometry I think that automaticity is the most feasible. It is true that every teacher is a literacy teacher. The texts that students interact with in my class are not very expressive texts that they are analyzing to extract directions or equations/expressions to solve. 

How can you make the experience authentic in your content area? List examples
- Often times my students are interacting with sophisticated mathematical vocabulary for the first time in my class. My hope as their instructor is that when they come across key words they are automatically associating mathematical vocabulary with an image that I have shown them in their head as soon as they read the words. Often times I strive for this automaticity by incorporating word association (with a picture) in the do now, guided practice, independent practice and then test for this automaticity in the exit ticket. This data allows for me to know if we can move on using this vocabulary or if we need to re-introduce it in the following day's lesson.