What is reading?

1. What is reading? An Overview

2. Reading is… • Phonological awareness • Ability to hear and appreciate the sounds of language • Phonemic awareness • Ability to connect sounds to letters • Fluency • Lexicon • Development of vocabulary • Comprehension • Using schema, sensory images, asking questions, inferring, determining importance, synthesizing

3. Fluency

4. Who needs fluency? • Everyone! • Very young children with the development of oral language • Early readers as they are building literacy skills • Transitional readers as text gets more challenging • Fluent readers in new genres

6. Non-fluent readers • Process visual information slowly • Read word by word • Have inefficient word solving strategies • Miss much of meaning and thus must slow down to understand • Ignore punctuation as a way to construct meaning

7. Fluency building strategies • Reading stories • Pair reading, taping voice, choral reading, small group instruction or one-on-one instruction • Reciting poems • Performing scripts • Reader’s Theatre • Giving speeches/oral reports • Memorizing/ reciting lines for plays

8. ways to Build Fluency • Model good oral reading • Overtly teach readers what fluency is at all levels of literacy • Provide oral support for readers • Offer plenty of practice • Encourage fluency through phrasing

9. Read Aloud… • As you read model specific fluency strategies… • Notice the way I am using dialogue today • How does my voice change with the punctuation I use? • Listen to my voice today. How do I alter my voice as the characters change?

10. Linking Readingand Writing • Students read aloud from their writing • Through the writing craft discuss author’s intent • Discuss sentence fluency as writers • As students develop an appreciation for language as writers, their ability to manipulate it will increase.

11. Food For thought… • Fluency happens in writing too! • Handwriting • Lots and lots of writing practice (not worksheets but actual writing!)

12. Good Luck!!