Posted: July 7th, 2015

Fluency education at elementary level, for students in grade three

Fluency education at elementary level for students in grade three

Introduction

Fluency refers to the ability of a reader to read a given text with speed and accuracy, while expressing the ideas in a given piece of work. Fluency also involves the potentiality of a reader to incorporate variety of reading skills to decode the information presented on a given piece of writing and understanding the meaning of words and phrases used by the author (Rasinski, 2005). Therefore, this study focuses mainly on fluency education at elementary level for students in grade three. In an ideal situation fluency speed for each student depends upon the level of his or her reading (Canady & Rettig, 2008). The speed increase when reading a piece of writing that is below his or her reading level and decrease when reading a piece of writing that is above his or her reading level. Fluency reading helps to bridge the gap between decoding the message communicated by the writer in a given text and understanding what the texts appertains. When reading comprehensions, students may utilize prosody whereby, a student decodes the words without understanding the meaning of such word. The herein situation is more prevalent for students at elementary levels. The situation escalates when student is not emotionally and psychologically attached to what he or she is reading (Wolfe & Nevills, 2004).

Literature review

Students in third grades are those who have completed their first and second level of reading. The curriculum at this stage focuses on equipping students with knowledge about the past events and future undertakings. At third stage, students are given an opportunity to put together learning materials and start undertaking more complex readings (Mink, 2009). Additionally, students at this level start operating autonomously unlike in the previous levels. Students start reading by themselves with minimum supervision from, their teachers. However, at this level students still experiences numerous problems especially when reading comprehensions. Some of the problems include; Attention problem, atomicity problem, capacity and decoding problem. Attention problem is normally witness if a student can not be able to recall what she has red from a given piece of writing. On the contrary, the problem of atomicity occurs in three stages, in the first stage it become harder for student to identify words while in the second stage a student is able to identify some words but spent quite some time before he or recognizes the words. Lastly, the student takes less time to recognize some words and become fluency when reading the words (Wolfe & Nevills, 2004). The problem of capacity occurs when a student can not adequately execute words using his or her memory. However, this problem dependent on the student memory capacity. Finally the problem of decoding occurs when a student is experiencing difficulties to recognize new words and phrases as used in a particular context (Rasinski, 2005).

In order to solve the herein problems, teachers should encourage third grade students to read and discuss books in small groups and clarify unclear issues among them. Teachers should also encourage them to ask questions on areas where they don’t understand (Wolfe & Nevills, 2004). There are various methods through that teachers may employ to teach fluency to their students in third grade. Some teachers may employ texts book commonly referred to as basal readers while others may employ trade books as well as encouraging their students top read in groups. According to Rasinski (2005) it is crucial to combine both methods of teaching fluency to teach students at third grade. When using basal method the teacher may select the time that students are not so much occupied and supply them with a book that will fascinating their imagination. To select the book that fascinate students imagination may be done by asking the town media specialist to supply the book that is exciting students in town. The students are encouraged to read the book and improve their reading fluency(Lacina & Silva, 2011).On the contrary, the teacher may decide to employ the strategy of basal readers whereby students are exposed variety of books that covering wide areas of knowledge such as fictions, mysteries among many other areas. The use of basal readers enables students to learn how to conceptualize issues presented by the writer. This is because this strategy enables students to move with a sequential flow of ideas as presented by the author and building the reading fluency of students at this level (Mink, 2009).

Therefore, including fluency reading in education program for young pupils especially at elementary level such as Kindergarten is vital. This is because a student reading ability improves tremendously as he or she proceeds to higher levels of learning such as high school (Lacina & Silva, 2011). The basic measure for determining student fluency may involve evaluating the speed and accuracy of a student. The fluency rate for each student may be determined by a teacher as the student reads a particular comprehension (Rasinski, 2005). The teacher may record the words that the student read correctly and dividing the words by time spent usually per sixty second. On the other hand, to evaluate prosody, the teacher may tape the student while reading. The teacher may listen to the tape later while identifying the ability of a student to apply expression and phrases in his or her reading. It is essentially important for a student to read with expression in order to bring up the essential elements represented in a given text. For example, the emotions and the information communicated by the writer must be brought up by a fluency reader. Teachers at elementary levels have a responsibility of ensuring that, they understand the potentiality of there students in terms of fluency. They should conduct a continuous assessment of their student and grade them based on the predetermined rating standards established by the relevant education body. Fluency education learning programs should be established not only at kindergarten level but also at high school level (Canady & Rettig, 2008). The establishment of fluency reading in schools education programs equips students with vital knowledge and skills of fluency reading and enables them to conceptualizing the basic ideas as represented by the author. Study indicates that, teachers who indicates fluency instructions to their students at elementary levels shows substantial improvements of their reading skills than those who do not indicate. Teachers may use Charts to record the progress of their students, since charts may help to indicate the areas that a student needs assistance for continuous performance improvement (Wolfe & Nevills, 2004).

Conclusion

Therefore, based on the above discussion, reading fluency among students in third grade is normally faced by numerous challenges such as; attention problem, atomicity problem, capacity and decoding problems. However, teachers may help their students to cope with the herein problems by employing basal reader’s techniques and group discussions, Additionally, teachers handling students at third grade should encourage their student to practice regular reading in order to achieve their reading speed and accuracy.

References

Canady, R. L., & Rettig, M. D. (2008). Elementary school scheduling: Enhancing instruction for student achievement. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Lacina, J., & Silva, C. (2011). Cases of successful literacy teachers. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications.

Mink, Deborah V. (2009). Strategies for Building Fluency. Shell Education.

Rasinski, T. V. (2005). The fluent reader: Oral reading strategies for building word recognition, fluency, and comprehension. New York [u.a.: Scholastic Professional Books.

Wolfe, P., & Nevills, P. (2004). Building the reading brain, preK-3. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin Press.