Dave: Check out the NAEP oral reading studies (try googling NAEP oral reading). Two studies, one in mid nineties and one in 2005, both with fourth graders (n = 1200 in the first study, 1400 in the second) -- both found a relationship between oral reading fluency and silent reading comprehension -- students who read with the greatest levels of prosody, made their oral reading sound like real language were the best comprehenders by far. As expression decreased, so did comprehension. With some colleagues in Omaha we found similar results with 3rd, 5th, and 7th graders (300+ students at each grade level) Timothy Rasinski 404 White Hall Kent State University Kent, OH 44242 330-672-0649 Cell -- 330-962-6251 FAX 330-672-2025 [EMAIL PROTECTED] informational website: www.timrasinski.com professional development DVD: http://www.roadtocomprehension.com/ <https://exchange.kent.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.roadtocomprehension.com/>
________________________________ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Dave Middlebrook Sent: Mon 7/9/2007 10:29 PM To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Summary of Stahl's summary of the NRP on Fluency Thanks Elaine! Lots to chew on. My quick take after reading your summary is that fluency is important in the context of authentic reading, but that the farther fluency work gets from authentic texts and the more targeted it gets on speed and accuracy without comprehension, the less useful it is. Is that an accurate way to put it? On the nudge front, I didn't see much on prosody. That is an area of current and significant interest for me. If you have any other sources on that, I'd be interested in looking into them. I'll be digging into your book before the summer ends. Thanks for your detailed replies. 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "elaine garan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group" <mosaic@literacyworkshop.org> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 1:05 PM Subject: [MOSAIC] Summary of Stahl's summary of the NRP on Fluency Ta-Dah!! For Dave or anyone else-- here it is hot off the press: Ok-Here is the information from Stahl's chapter on Fluency in The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research. This was sanctioned by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the various sections were written by members or contributors of the Report of the National Reading Panel. Its purpose is to put the panel's research into practice so this has the federal stamp of approval. Stahl was a contributor to the NRP report. What he's done is try to pull together the various studies and the findings of the NRP and discuss their implications for classroom teaching. I'm going to outline the chapter section by section since so that the big picture isn't lost. If I have a personal comment, I'll note it as such. Otherwise, this is the flow of undiluted, uncherrypicked federally- sanctioned Stahl. I think what he says is well-balanced, fair and makes a lot of sense. This is a draft-it is accurate in terms of content-- but no doubt has spelling or grammatical errors but I'm not cleaning it up now. 1. Ch starts with how fluency has been a neglected topic but is destined to move to the forefront because of NCLB. (p. 187) 2. Then Stahl discusses models of reading development that emphasize fluency-Chall, Ehri-and how the belief is that if kids can recognize words automatically, they can devote energy to comprehension. This is the same argument and the same researchers who support heavy phonics instruction for the same reason. Note: He describes this in terms of models and does not agree or disagree. He then moves on to the definition of fluency (p.187-188) 3. Stahl states that conventionally, fluency is defined as 1) a reasonable rate; 2) "accurate without too many miscues" NOTE: Stahl uses the term "miscues" instead of "errors" thus appearing to validate the concept-I would note that later he cites Marie Clay and others connected to Reading Recovery to promote the use of context, rather than decoding alone to help kids identify words. 3) prosodic-read with expression to sound like language. 4. THEN-and this is important-Stahl (p. 188) says that these definitions of reading (those 3 components) are over simplified and that "Reading, however, is more complex" 5. He then qualifies and expands on that oversimplified definition of fluency by saying, (p. 188) "Teachers assume that those who... are struggling with the text, making many miscues, hesitating and repeating words are struggling readers and that those who read the text comfortably are comprehending accurately. He says, for the most part this is true. But then he gets into the complexities and the qualifications: 7. "Reading however is more complex. Sometimes children can be reading accurately but do not understand what they read" He cites (Carpenter an Paris and also Pinnell et al (1995) 8. He then goes on for 2 pages saying how the 3 components of fluency (rate, accuracy and prosody) are not enough. He cites Pinnell's study for NAEP-who found that 4th graders tested in this special study "showed that overall, oral reading accuracy was not significantly related to comprehension "(p. 188) 9. Pinnell et all DID find however that "significant miscues were strongly related to comprehension. ([pp.188) 10. Stahl then further supports the Pinnell findings that "oral reading accuracy was only related to comprehension In first and second grades with correlations in third grade and beyond dropping to near zero." This quote is from studies by Carpenter and Paris-also a study by Schwnaenflugel, Kuhn , Meidnhrt, Bradley and Stahl. 11. Stahl then concludes. "Thus, oral reading accuracy may be important only in early grades, with other factors such as vocabulary and comprhension strategy use becoming important later." NOTE: This does not mean that training kids to read faster influences comprehension since the results are correlational and correlation is not causation. In fact, Stahl says this later on in the chapter. 11. He then distinguishes rate from accuracy and says that oral reading rate remains important through elementary years (p.189). So this answers Dave's question. Rate then was associated with comprehension. He then gets into the implications for reading/fluency instruction: 12. His thesis is that fluency should be taught through contectual reading, not through isolated word practice or isolated passage practice: "Teaching children to say isolated words faster does not seem to improve comprhension. A number of studies have examined teaching children to say words that they know faster"-Then he lists a series of studies. "Although all of these studies found that children's passage reading fluency improved, none found differences between the study group and the control group. 13. Studies of repeated and assisted reading of connected text, not isolated words do show strong effects of measures of comprehension as well as on meas;ures of fluency. "Competent reading requires skills that extend beyond the single word level to contextual reading and that this skill can best be acquired by practicing reading in which the words are in a meaningful context" (p. 189) NOTE: What does this say about DIBELS practice in which some of the practice/assessment isn't even at the word level but has young children call out nonsense words? This also has implications for ssr and wide reading since the correlation can mean that reading/comprehension can influence rate even as rate can influence comprehension. 14. He then cites criticisms of round robin reading and appropriate reading feedback. He here cites Clay and suggests cueing children to use their knowledge of words and meaning to decode unknown words in context and says that these methods are more effective than round robin reading. 15. Then he gets into "repeated readings, neurological impress and similar techniques" as ways of promoting fluency (p.191). He says that the problem was that most of these studies measured these techniques on fluency of particular PASSAGES-in other words, the kids read passages repeatedly and then their improvement or change was measured on a posttest of the same passages. This is important-Stahl states that these studies did not measure whether the improvement translated to general reading. NOTE: These are almost the exact words used by Michael Pressley in his independent research on DIBELS-He states, DIBELS training makes kids better in DIBELS and that's it. 16. In other words, as with isolated word training, kids got better and faster on calling out isolated words - but they did not improve in general reading and comprehension. So the fact that the studies showed improvement in passage fluency does not mean that the training results in transfer to general reading achievement. However, when repeated readings are combined with other measures, such as previewing a text or listening, seems to be effective for first graders and struggling fifth graders (NOTE: That is a really narrow population of effectiveness!) 17. Stahl then cites the NRP on repeated readings as a means of training fluency as connected to achievement: " But the panel reported [as a qualification to the positive results of expanded repeated readings on first graders and fifth graders]- "It certainly cannot be inferred that repeated reading or other guided repeated oral reading procedures would be effective in raising reading achievement on the basis of these studies alone. (in Stahl, pl 191 citing NRP, p. 3-16) NOTE: Melanie Kuhn's study (that I cited and offered to send to you all) was done after this chapter by Stahl was written and her conclusions support those of Stahl's here. Her repeated reading/fluency trained group improved in fluency but not comprehension. On the other hand the group that did lots of reading improved in BOTH fluency and comprehension. 18. Stahl states that fluency training, including repeated readings, has more of an influence on fluency than it does on comprehension: "That the effects on measures of reading comprehension are lower than those for fluency measures are not surprising.. Reading comprehension is less directly related to fluency training than are more direct measures of fluency. Transfer is always more difficult to find. However the findings seem encouraging." (p.192). 19. Stahl then gets into a huge section on how important authentic practice is in reading. He discusses why the NRP did not find enough experimental studies to support SSR-they left out the Elley Book Flood studies and they used fluency rather than comprehension and vocabulary for the outcomes of SSR. He then recommends SSR as part of every school day where kids read books of their choice. I posted a lot on SSR and it's in my book so I'm not reposting all of that. I20. n summary in "putting this all together" Stahl states, "Although many successful approaches used repeated readings of a single text, repetition does not seem to be necessary. Instead, it seems to be necessary to increase the amount of reading that children do at an appropriate level" (p.207)-THAT is a vital quote that somehow I left out of my book, darn it. "Although fuency-accuracy, rate, and prosody-is an important component of effective reading, it is not sufficient to make a child a reader. .. Our studies show that fluency is most important in first and second grades, with other aspects of reading gaining importance in third grade and higher." (p. 208). "Disfluent reading can limit a child's comprehension but more than fluency is needed to make a child a good reader" (p. 208) You can agree or disagree with any of this, but this is an accurate summary of what Stahl says the NRP says about fluency. So other than the capitalized NOTES-where I expand or comment on some aspect of the research (I think I've earned the right)-this is not me saying this-this is the NRP I would note that the National Literacy Panel on Minority Children and Youth reports many of the same findings as the NRP-too much training and focus on surface skills so kids read accurately and with intonation-but do not comprehend. SAME with the phonics section of the NRP_- training in phonics improves phonics skills on isolated word lists, but does NOT transfer to comprehension. Thanks . Elaine _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list Mosaic@literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. 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