Re: [MOSAIC] fluency

[Dave Middlebrook]

I really liked this part of Maureen's comment (the full comment is below):

"All they see is that when their ten-year-olds read aloud, they read 
painstakingly slowly and they stumble over "easy" words.  Through a variety 
of measures, I have shown that these children are often comprehending texts 
above grade level at deeper levels than many of the "good readers," to no 
avail."

This is a comment that keeps popping up on our conversations.  I am glad 
that it does.

I'll make a personal observation here: Perhaps it is the nature of our 
society.  I don't know.  But my experience has been that the comprehension 
that is most valued always seems to be the expected, the most easily shared, 
the least divergent, the one that gets the most heads to nod in agreement in 
the shortest amount of time.  To me, there is a tension to comprehension: 
To be valued, it must be quickly formulated and easily shared, but to be 
truely valuable, it must be stewed on the back burner and allowed to veer 
off the beaten path.  The second is the more valuable because we only grow 
through struggle, and by going where we haven't been before.

My sense is that people who struggle with reading are more likely to be 
divergent comprehenders -- which makes their insights less easily shared, 
less socially successful, but potentially much more valuable.

And I think we've done a disservice to fluency, by deeming it "critical", 
and by forgetting that it is about the music and not the metronome.

- Dave

Dave Middlebrook
The Textmapping Project
A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction.
www.textmapping.org   |   Please share this site with your colleagues!
USA: (609) 771-1781
dmiddlebr...@textmapping.org
Learning Diffabilities blog: http://diffabilities.wordpress.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Maureen Morrissey" <mobil...@optonline.net>
To: "'Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group'" 
<mosaic@literacyworkshop.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 5:58 AM
Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] fluency


Lori,
I wish that some of the parents of my students with the same issue had 
your
wisdom.  I cannot convince them that oral fluency does not impact reading
comprehension, and that reading comprehension is the most important part 
of
reading. All they see is that when their ten-year-olds read aloud, they 
read
painstakingly slowly and they stumble over "easy" words.  Through a 
variety
of measures, I have shown that these children are often comprehending 
texts
above grade level at deeper levels than many of the "good readers," to no
avail. I tell them that instead of having their child read aloud at home, 
to
have her/him read silently and then discuss what was read.

The parents also cannot hear when I say that oral fluency is only meant 
for
performance, even when I ask them to tell the last time they read aloud in
their lives (other than reading to their kids).

I too use Readers' Theater and poetry to make fluency authentic, and one
nice resource is Benchmarks Readers' Theater books which have a variety of
topics and genres, and "level" each part so that a variety of children can
participate in the same book.  I am not sure why fluency has suddenly 
become
so imperative; I know it is one of the facets of reading the NRP came up
with for the ESEA legislation, but I'm not sure why....

Maureen


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