Fluency

This weeks readings focused on the importance of fluency and how it is best measured and taught in the classroom. In Creating Fluent Readers, Rasinski suggests that a great way to develop fluency in the classroom is to allow the students to perform their read-aloud passages. These passages can be anything from monologues, dialogues, poetry to jokes and riddles. Teachers can do this by turning their classrooms into poetry cafés or having readers' theater festivals. This really stood out to me because I love the idea of making the process of fluency development exciting and fun for the students.

Students performing in a Readers' Theater!

NAEC/IRA position statement

Building off of my last post concerning the importance of appropriate exposure and practices of literacy for children, something else that stuck out to me was the importance of reading aloud to children. According to the reading, this is the "single most important activity for building these understandings and skills essential for reading success" (pg.3). I couldn't agree more with this statement. Reading aloud to children allows for them to engage and enjoy reading while gaining "emotional security" in regards to reading.

Storyline Online.net is a site that streams videos of childrens books being read aloud that children can watch. Each story is accompanied with activities and lesson plan ideas! Check it out!

Emergent Literacy Readings

This week’s readings focused on the importance of positive early exposure to print in childhood. Something that stuck out to me in one of the readings was the idea that there is no one teaching method or strategy that is the most effective for all children. The children that make up our classrooms today are very diverse and a successful teacher will use a variety of teaching strategies to reach each student in her classroom. Children are exposed to literacy before they even come to kindergarten. Building off of what they already know is a good way to get them excited about learning what they don't know. 

This is a great way of using what young students already know about and incorporating it in to learning in their classroom library!