23 words per minute

I have the pleasure of working one-on-one with several beginning readers, my own and a handful of others. There's nothing more amazing than sitting beside a new reader and listening to them as they "get" reading. It's something that you hear — their reading goes from word to word, choppy, and staccato-sounding to more phrasal, intonated, and just plain faster. But, how fast?

Words Correct per Minute (WCPM) is one way to determine a student's reading fluency. Quick probes based on carefully selected passages can help teachers screen, diagnose, and monitor students' progress.

Two researchers, Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal, have spent a great deal of time quantifying the oral reading fluency of kids in grades 1-8. In 2006 they published revised norms which provide guidance about where kids should be functioning.

In many cases, students will need some fluency instruction. And the good news is that fluency instruction will improve reading achievement. Really!

How do you assess your kids oral reading fluency? Do these norms align with the ones you use?

Careful watching and listening during those first few days of school

First day jitters? First week jitters? Assessing kids those first few days and weeks of school probably isn't a great idea. Kids need a chance to settle in to school, to learn the new routine, and generally become more comfortable in the new classroom. Hopefully, by waiting, a child's assessment results more accurately reflect her true skills.

Here in Virginia, kindergarten teachers aren't supposed to use their state-mandated assessment until the kids have been in school for six weeks. Teachers in grades 1-3 begin to assess after two weeks of school. So, what's a teacher to do during those first few days? Some thoughtful planning, watching, and listening can yield some terrific information about student skills.

I love the conversations centered around a child's writing in this clip Spelling as a Diagnostic Tool. It's so important to be able to look at a child's writing and know how to learn from it. Our Looking at Writing module provides just that opportunity using writing samples from kids PreK-3. See if you can gather a writing sample from each student and make some notes on each one regarding strengths and areas of need.

A reading interest inventory is one way to find out how kids feel about reading and books. This Professor Garfield survey (see pages 7-12) is widely used and uses cute pictures to gather the information. There are lots of others out there too, like this one and this one from Scholastic.

Sitting with a child and listening as he reads provides an opportunity to use a fluency rubric to assess reading behaviors such as expression and volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace. Scores could be given in each of the areas, or the rubric could just be used as a framework for thinking about a child's fluency.

Last, I think it's just useful to sit, watch, and talk to your students, particularly during silent reading time. What sorts of books does a student choose? How much reading stamina does a child have? Are they focused and "getting lost" in books, or distracted and fidgety? Do your students prefer to read in a quiet corner, or together with a friend?

Each little bit of information we can gather can help us provide the best environment and instruction for our students. Happy back to school!

Cat on the loose so get ready for Read Across America Day

Is the cat (as in Cat in the Hat) coming to town near you? Three Cat-a-Vans will start their tours today to promote Read Across America, the national celebration of Dr. Seuss's March 2nd birthday.

It seems only fitting that the celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday involves reading. This is the man who is credited with writing the first books with a limited number of words that would actually stimulate beginning readers.

The first was the Cat in the Hat — now an emblem for Seuss's creative genius later followed by my personal favorite of the beginner books is Green Eggs and Ham(both Random). This silly book — written with only 50 words, by the way — still makes me chuckle even after lots (and lots and lots) of readings.

It's interesting that books with a purpose (these so-called easy readers), can motivate as well as provide success with so few words. I think it's the outrageous humor and the pure silliness in both picture and word that captures readers. And so will the life of Dr. Seuss.

The biography of Theodor Geisel makes a great read aloud (or read alone). Katherine Krull's picture book biography of the doctor, The Boy on Fairfield Street (Random House) presents a life that may inspire other young artists.

So, look for the Cat-a-Van in your area. And let's celebrate Seuss and reading on March 2nd — and beyond — by reading across America!

I'd give this report card comment an N (for needs improvement)

A friend in Northern Virginia sent me the text from her son's third grade report card comment. Her e-mail message to me said this: ??????????????????????????????

I've typed the text below, and would love to hear your thoughts. Is it clear? Does it make sense? Are there things parents might need more information about?

Comment in with your suggestions for improvement or with your own experience with report card comments. Next week: I'll combine our ideas to write a revised (interpreted) report card comment for my friend!

Jack's currently reading at a Rigby level 18. At this level with narrative text, Jack's reading is fluent (75 WCPM) and he has adequate comprehension. With expository text, however, Jack's reading becomes disfluent (60 WCPM) and he's unable to answer implicit comprehension questions. We will continue teach strategies such as DRTA and graphic organizers to help assist Jack's comprehension. In spelling, Jack is a within word speller. He's currently studying long vowels and ambiguous vowel patterns. Thank you for your support at home. Daily reading will support the work we're doing here at school.

Monitoring self-monitoring

I recently read a post about recognizing, teaching, and supporting self-monitoring behaviors in young readers. The post describes two readers: David, who asks questions and self corrects word errors as he reads, and Frannie, who plows through text regardless of errors that either change the meaning of the text, include nonsense words, or don't make any sense at all. The author stresses how important it is for readers to think about what they are saying as they read. "From the very earliest reading experiences that we have with children, we need to send the message that reading is supposed to make sense and that it's their job to be checking that their reading IS making sense." See more at Catching Readers Before They Fall.

This post resonated with me because of Becca, a first grader I just started tutoring. She's an on-grade level reader (Rigby 7/8, Guided Reading E) but she REALLY wants to be reading chapter books like some of her classmates. Her reading speed (about 60 words per minute) suggests that her fluency is still developing. She's still a choppy, word-by-word reader. So, although she's a bit slow, it's partially because she does a great job monitoring her reading. She frequently stops and self corrects herself. She questions when her decoding attempt results in a non-word. She listens to herself and expects what she reads to make sense. This is great, but it does slow her down.

As her tutor, I'm thrilled with her reading behavior. Moving forward, we're going to focus on strategies to increase her fluency while maintaining the expectation that reading makes sense. Last week I introduced a re-reading chart (165 KB PDF)* from the Book Buddies manual on which Becca is using tally marks to track how many times she's read the three books I sent her home with. This week, we'll add new books to her rereading bag and try a timed repeated reading. I think she'll like that strategy, although not every child does!

What do you do to help a child monitor their comprehension while developing their fluency at the same time?

Nonsense, as in nonsense words

Mog.
Fim.
Phum.
Sote.
Pagbo.

Just a few examples of the types of words students are asked to read on a Nonsense Word assessment. Some assessments are timed (how many nonsense words can you read in one minute?), and some assessments use a ceiling (stop when the student incorrectly reads 5 in a row).

Nonsense word measures are one part of DIBELS, a widely-used assessment for young children, they're one part of the Orton Gillingham approach to teaching reading, and are one part of most diagnostic work done with struggling readers.

Nonsense word lists and task are also finding their way into general education classrooms as part of curriculum based measures. At this point, teachers often balk. "I want kids to read for meaning. There's no meaning in this!"

Nonsense word fluency measures a student's ability to decode individual phonemes and then blend them together to read. They're an indicator of a student's progress in acquiring early alphabetic principle skills. By using nonsense words, we can find out whether a child knows the most common sound for letters (letter–sound correspondence), and whether a child can blend the sounds to read words he has never seen before.

So, nonsense word reading works really well as a quick, reliable, and valid way of assessing part of the alphabetic principle. BUT, we can teach and develop the alphabetic principle without ever explicitly teaching nonsense word reading. Hooray!

Putting fluency in its place

For six years I trained and observed preservice elementary education students. I vividly remember one lesson, observing a student teacher whose lesson plan included using timed repeated readings to increase her students' reading speed.

Everything started off well until I saw the text she planned to use: A POEM. For timed repeated readings! I watched as she worked with students one-on-one using some of her favorite Shel Silverstein poems and a bar graph.

Can you guess what we talked about during her post-observation conference? Fluency and text, and the role of comprehension in fluency. Good topics, eh?

I was reminded of that episode this week as I ran across this on the IRA website. The author is clearly trying to help teachers understand that speed is important, but it's not everything. As with many things, fluency work has its place in developing readers who can read with expression AND understand what they've read.

The Florida Center for Reading Research offers this handy graphic to help teachers see what types of activities develop fluency, and a continuum of activities that progress as students' skill level increases.

How do you balance fluency and comprehension work in your classroom? I'd love to hear!

Reading at home: "You either get angry or you can bribe them"

Last week's blog post about Accelerated Reader generated some great comments, both here on the blog and also on our Facebook page. I love that the audience for this blog appears to be a combination of parents, teachers, principals, reading specialists, grandparents, special education teachers, graduate students….

A comment from last week's post inspired this week's title. Alex's comment was a dead-on piece of reality:

From a parent's point of view, when you are sitting with your kid and encouraging them to read, meanwhile they are tired and bored and guessing at words and making up games, what can you do? You either get angry and say, "just read this, I know you can and it's getting late and I'm tired!" or you can bribe them...."if you read this, you'll get some sort of special treat." I really haven't seen a deep discussion of how to help during those little times. No practical tips. I hear things like, "pick a regular time each day, continue to read to the kids, make it fun!" but not a lot of practical advice.

Haven't we all been there at some point with a reluctant reader?

Sadly, the "practical advice" needed isn't quick and easy to communicate, and it really is darn hard work. But, if I were to pick one piece of advice to help during those times, it would be this: make sure your child is reading at his or her independent level at home.

A child's independent level is the level at which the material is relatively easy for the student to read, and can be read with at least 95% accuracy. Books at this level aren't hard for the child to read, and dont require the child to sound out lots of words. Most of the words are read quickly and easily.

When a child spends time reading at his independent level, he's getting a chance to practice word recognition and word analysis skills (the ones hopefully being taught at school). Repeated readings of the same book over and over again enable each reading to become smoother. Soon, the reading will begin to "sound like talking." These are all important steps in becoming a fluent reader.

So, get ready to hear those favorite beginning reader books over and over again. Build up a basketful of independent-level books to be read at night, and then read 4 or 6 a night.

A side note: In our house, we "retire" a book when it can be read with eyes closed.

Related: How to Read with a Beginning Reader

To read or not to read — what is the motivation?

Motivating children to read is a topic of great concern for many, so when I was recently asked about it I started thinking about why I — or any adult — read (or not) and what this may teach us about the kids in our lives.

One thing I know is that people of any age tend not to do what's excessively difficult, incomprehensible to them, or simply not fun. For me, the topic may be dull or maybe it's just that I don't know the subject which makes the decoding difficult.

In any case, a lot has been written about motivation. But what can we learn from our own experiences?

Michaela loves the beach. So when Bats at the Beach (Houghton) was read to her by her adoring grandmother, the not-quite three-year-old asked that it be read to her over and over until she could recite it verbatim. Not only did the subject of the book appeal, but she also had a caring adult who shared it with her.

Something in Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins) spoke to three-and-a-half year old Nicky who could soon recite the book word for word, adding sound effects for the pages with no text.

Third grader Kayla spent so much time decoding words that she simply didn't have the energy left to read for meaning or pleasure. That seemed to begin to change with a book that had familiar characters from a television show. It seems that Kayla built on this familiarity.

Kayla is now in fifth grade; Nicky is heading to high school. Both are honor students and read for pleasure as well for school. Michaela is really ready to read and will probably start before she gets to first grade.

Seems what each of these children have in common are books that somehow "spoke" to them. Add to that a caring adult, and they seemed to find inspiration. With inspiration comes motivation. But at the heart of their motivation are books.