A Rather “Funny” Approach to Reading Fluency Instruction

1. A Rather “Funny” Approachto Reading Fluency Instruction Kim Stansell-Towe Department of Curriculum October 30, 2009

2. Key Elements of Reading Fluency • accuracy in word decoding • automaticity in recognizing words • meaningful oral expression

3. Gateway to Comprehension • accuracy • automaticity • prosody

4. Lack of Reading Fluency Due to These Factors can Result in: • poor comprehension • lack of motivation for and excitement of reading • personal sense of failure

5. “Comprehensive”Reading Fluency Instruction • must address accuracy, automaticity, and prosody • should be efficient and integrated in order to produce fluent readers who comprehend • must motivate and engage

6. comprehension. Reading fluency instruction with a sole focus on improving reading rate may increase reading rate, but will not have the desired effect on reading .

7. How Do You Provide “Comprehensive”Reading Fluency Instruction in a Way that Motivates and Engages? Try implementing performance-based repeated readings using text genres such as poetry, song lyrics, chants, rhymes, jokes, riddles, plays, monologues, dialogues, and letters.

8. Benefits • motivating and fun • includes a wide variety of reading genres • improves accuracy, automaticity, prosody, AND comprehension RESEARCH-PROVEN

9. Using Joke Books to Build Fluency

10. Benefits • Fluency development • Vocabulary and language development • Comprehension development • Individual social development • Reading motivation • Building community in the classroom

11. Research-Based Strategy It can be used as a strategy for students struggling with reading fluency - as a form of repeated reading.

12. Resources • “Reading fluency instruction: Moving beyond accuracy, automaticity, and prosody”, The Reading Teacher, Vol 59, No. 7, April 2006. • “Laughing Through Rereadings: Using Joke Books to Build Fluency”, The Reading Teacher, Vol. 62, No. 8, May 2009.