I have been reading the fluency discussion, but intentionally staying out of it. However, I just can't resist the opportunity to ask Dr. Rasinski a few questions. (I own two of your books, and have heard you speak several times as well.) You said:>My own > research has in fact found strong correlations between fluency and > comprehension all the way through senior high school. ... Interestingly, however, policy makers >are not terribly interested > in fluency with older students. It's just not issue they say. This is not the case in Florida (home of Joe Torgenson) where we are now required to teach fluency and give one minute fluency tests to middle and high school students in intensive reading classes. These are the kids who score below grade level on the state acheivement test. For the past two years, we gave this test quarterly (in addition to informal testing in the classroom). This year it was given 3 times. Overall, most of these students fail to meet the target rates AND they have poor comprehension, so I'd say that our data matches yours. What I'd like to know is if there is any evidence that focusing on improving fluency improves comprehension. In other words, how do we know that poor fluency causes poor comprehension and not the other way around? Could focusing on comprehension strategies improve fluency - possibly more than the current mania focusing on reading rates? Incidentally, we see virtually patterns in the data we've collected from these fluency prompts. My second question has to do with ELL students. We have quite a lot of these in Florida. I have found that many ELL students with horrible fluency have good comprehension. I have also found that many of our ELL students who score well on the fluency probes have virtually no comprehension of what they've read. Have there been any large studies with this population that could help us know the best approach for teaching these readers? Thanks for any enlightenment you can send my way. Diana Middle School Literacy Coach _________________________________________________________________ Create the ultimate e-mail address book. Import your contacts to Windows Live Hotmail. www.windowslive-hotmail.com/learnmore/managemail2.html?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGLM_HMWL_reten_impcont_0507 _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org.
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