Monday, March 16, 2009
Blog #8
Because this week's post was about the topic of fluency, I researched the simplest definition I could find and found this one to be the most suitable: "Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly" (National Institute for Literacy). I think fluency is one of the most important aspects for successful literacy. I believe that one of the most important aspects toward assessing students word identification and fluency is listening to the students verball read a text out loud. During reader's workshop, my CT has the students read certain pages of texts one-on-one with her to determine their understandings and word identification. I believe that the DIBELS assessment also helps test levels of fluency/comprehension as I have previously administered a DIBELS assessment during my 3rd grade placement in TE 301. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is a good book for upper-elementary to use to test their vocabulary knowledge and comprehension of the textual material because the book is so rich in historical fiction. One of the reader response activities I had completed early-on involved identifying unknown vocabulary terms and discovering the meaning. Page 33 of the text (chapter 2) had many words that I was unsure of, let-alone a 4th grade student. A few of the words I had marked are: ginned, dwarfed, sinewy and tawny. A good mini-lesson that could be used with this book to test fluency could involve an activity of this kind where students are placed in groups and given a vocabulary word from the chapter. It would be their groups job to discover the meaning of it, as the class would complete a jig-saw activity, where each student would switch groups and share with the rest of their group members until everyone in the class had each word's meaning decoded. Another mini-fluency idea for this book could be a vocabulary bingo game where verbs, nouns and adjectives are brought in as factors as well. I stand by my previous comment that fluency is one of the most important aspects to literacy. It is important for teachers to implement many of these vocabulary building and syntactical activities into their lesson plans to further their students' literacy development.
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I really liked the idea of incorporating vocabulary into the fluency lesson and also the incorporation of the jig-saw activity we have done in class. I feel by knowing vocabulary words and the meaning of them, young readers can better understand and comprehend the text and in turn relate to some of the issues or problems faced by the characters in the story. I also feel the jig-saw idea would be a nice touch to such an activity. As we have discussed before, the jig-saw concept gives each student in the group a sense of responsibility and ownership as far the meaning of the word they are to look up. By having this responsibility to teach others their word, I feel the students would take the time to make sure they get all they can out of the word and the way it adds to the story.
ReplyDeleteI also like the idea of jig-sawing the vocabulary words. I think that this helps take away some of the tediousness of finding definitions. I do see problems with this type of activity though, students may only master their word. I think that with older students it could be sucessful to have them work and share because they are usually able to be more independent and take ownership of what they are learning. With younger students I could see it becoming more of a race, quickly write down everyone's definitions so we can move on to the next and be done. In any case, I really like the idea but I would have to test it out and see how effective it would be and in what contexts it works.
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