Fluency and Observation Notes

Practicum and Assignment Submission

Practicum is a group effort, reflecting collaborative lesson plan development.
Submit the practicum with the next assignment in one Dropbox location.

Teaching Hours and Course Credit

Teaching hours from the start of the dyslexia class can count towards credit.
Complete a form and a spreadsheet to log hours (forms to be shown later).
Hours typically count from when the training class starts, pending confirmation from Rhonda.
Keep track of hours in a planner/notebook and update the spreadsheet monthly or quarterly.
60-70 hours needed for initial help certification; 700 for therapist level.
QI level requires a significant amount of hours.
Student folders with necessary files will be provided.

Summer School Groups

Summer school groups can count if providing therapy, ideally 3+ days a week.
A modified schedule may be possible if the frequency is less.
Each group requires a minimum of 20 hours of consistent work to count towards certification.
Groups can be in-person (strongly suggested for beginners) or online.
Forms for each group will be introduced near the end of the class.

Group Consistency and Certification Hours

Groups must have at least 20 hours together to count towards certification.
Ideally, work with the same group throughout the year, covering 75 concepts (one concept per hour).
Build in review days and mastery check days (mastery checks count towards hours).
All requirements are set by the National ELTA Board.
A certificate of completion is provided upon readiness for the practitioner exam.
The practitioner exam requires application and proctoring.

Conference and Module Information

National conference attendance is encouraged.
Trainee memberships are available for conference access.
Rhonda will teach the next class (Module 12: Vocabulary).
This session covers building fluency.
Module 13 (lesson planning) is posted for review, but will be covered in a future class.
No new assignment for fluency this week, just a discussion.
Vocabulary will have a practicum and assignment, as usual.
Daily lesson planning assignment is due in six weeks.
Module 14 covers case studies, followed by the demonstration lesson.

Demonstration Lesson

Demonstration lessons will be planned during class time.
The demonstration lesson is video-recorded (1 hour). Upload the video.
Feedback will be provided after the video is watched.
The demonstration lesson is a practice run with feedback; failure is rare if effort is made.

Fluency Discussion

The goal of the present discussion is to share experiences and definitions of fluency.
Fluency encompasses reading smoothly and understanding the text.
Assessments like DIBELS are used to measure fluency.
The traditional view emphasizes word count per minute, but current discussions focus on comprehension as equally important.

Comprehension and Accuracy

Comprehension is key to fluency; accurate reading is more important than speed, especially for dyslexic students.
Fluency involves reading with expression and accuracy.
More time should be dedicated to fluency practice, especially for students with dyslexia.
The objective is for dyslexic children to achieve comprehension, starting with word and letter knowledge.

Fluency Definition and Connected Text

Fluency involves rapidly mobilizing knowledge about words to comprehend text.
A good basic definition of fluency is reading accurately, smoothly, at an appropriate speed, and with expression, leading to comprehension.
$Bersh$ defines fluency (page 40) as mobilizing word knowledge quickly enough to comprehend.
Connected text refers to sentences, paragraphs, and pages, not just isolated words.

Dyslexia and Fluency

Sally Shaywitz emphasizes that a child who reads accurately but not fluently may be dyslexic.
Dyslexic readers struggle to decode, mangle words, and lack cadence.
Fluent readers read effortlessly, which allows them to comprehend the text.
Fluency serves as a bridge between decoding and comprehension.
Reading has two main components: decoding and comprehension.

Brain Function and Fluency

Dyslexia causes an inefficient system in the neural pathways of the brain.
It is important to give the executive system enough time to direct attention efficiently.
Practice helps to automaticity decoding, enabling inference and prediction.
The goal is for students to gain knowledge while they are reading.
Dyslexic readers use different systems in their brains to read.

Science of Reading and Brain Research

Brain research shows that the phonology (sound-based), orthography (visual-based), and semantics (meaning-context-based) are all in the occipital temporal region.
Functional MRIs show brain activation before and after intervention.
Neurologists are honing in on the brain and why specific practices help.
The brain processes visual input (orthography), sounds (phonology), and meaning (semantics).

Fluency Instruction

The goal of fluency instruction is to work on new neural circuits and changes in brain activation.
Making reading automatic minimizes effort and enables higher-level cognition.
Prior theory emphasized repeated reading of individual words, building sight words.
Newer theory integrates decoding and phonology with connected text and vocabulary instruction.
Vocabulary is most efficiently embedded within authentic literature.

Vocabulary and Exposure

Robust vocabulary instruction is implemented with authentic literature.
Multiple encounters with words in meaningful contexts help build them.
Vocabulary words should be used in multiple ways and multiple times.
The semantics of a word in a meaningful way expands and strengthens word exposure.
It reinforces learned patterns and sight words.
Limiting students to only decodable text should be avoided.

Fluency Lesson Plan

The key components of fluency lesson plan are assessments and data, text selection, instructional time, fluency activities, and progress monitoring.
Assessments may include DIBELS and multidimensional fluency scale to assess prosody and intonation.
Text selection relies on student interest, age, grade level, and decoding skill level.
Prior knowledge, vocabulary, and connected text read-aloud time form part of the instructional time, but should be protected time.

Text Selection & Resources

If educators do not have a choice of text, they can tweak or supplement it.
AI can change the text format and render some parts more readable.
It is important to use text that builds background knowledge and world knowledge and stretches their thinking.
Microsoft Teams, Epic, and online libraries are good technology resources.
Instructional preparation is important for student success.
For students that are difficult to get reading, there are Decodable Readers.

Fluency Components and Oral Language

It is important for students to engage in reading connected text to become skilled readers.
Students also need to speak in full sentences if they are going to write in full sentences.
The factors of fluency include rate and pace, automaticity, phrasing and intonation, expression and volume, and then comprehension.
The grammar needs to affect and support what you're reading.

Fluency Strategies and Example Plan

A model plan for fluency includes modeling reading and discussion, choral reading with the teacher, echo reading, and pair group reading.
There should be a schedule across multiple days to repeatedly examine a given text that improves accuracy, punctuation, prosody, and expression.
When correcting phrasing, you can add written pencil swoops to texts to visualize breaks.
The text length should be less than 300 words.

Comprehension Strategies

In comprehending text for fluency, strategies include pre-reading the text, explaining difficult concepts, and establishing a purpose.
Activities commonly involve the five W's (who, what, when, where, why), summarizing, timelines, graphic organizers, and character analysis/comparison.
The feedback from providing fluency practice must be as positive as possible.
Corrective measures involve a focus on repeated reading to improve the automaticity rate and pace.

Fluency Feedback

Feedback should have limited interruptions and should be saved for the end of a sentence or paragraph.
Diagnostic measures may reveal trouble with a certain suffix or sight word.
Students in kindergarten through first grade should be able to build up to reading fluently for ten minutes.
Students in second and third grade should be up to 15 minutes of reading fluently.
Students in fourth grade should be up to 20 minutes of reading fluently.
Students in fifth grade should be up to 25 minutes of reading fluently, and sixth-grade students should be at 30 minutes.
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Fluency Rate and Weekly Growth

Fluency depends upon well-developed word recognition skills but should not always lead to fluency; therefore, fluency is the bridge.
The expected weekly growth rate can range from 0.5 words per minute depending on grade.
The parents can support students through consistent reading with them in a safe space for them in the learning environment.
Parents should provide support through listening to the student and giving them the proper feedback.
They could find high interest reading choices for their student or provide multiple reading devices.
These can include magazines, cereal boxes, and poetry.