Janet,

Fluency is a significant indicator of reading ability – it just is not the sole sign of comprehension. Young and poorer readers frequently comprehend better when reading occurs orally while more mature and advanced readers frequently comprehend better when reading is silent. A strategy that mature and advanced readers use when encounters text above their comfort level is to read orally. My colleague Margaret Scordias at the University of Missouri-St. Louis helped me think about what the National Reading Panel had to say (or not) about fluency. She said, “Overgeneralization and misinterpretations of statements by the NRP may have resulted in decrease in all silent reading in efforts to implement only scientific based reading research practices.” Right now, in our Missouri Reading First schools we see a strong focus on fluency practice in the primary grades yet students are making only minimal progress on standardized state assessments at the end of third grade. In other words, teachers are saying, “The kids are doing so much better in oral reading fluency in first grade yet just don’t do well on the state’s assessment two years later”. We seem to have a girder missing from the bridge between oral reading fluency and silent comprehension. The NRP stated:

With regard to the efficacy of having students engage in independent silent reading with minimal guidance or feedback, the Panel was unable to find a positive relationship between programs and instruction that encourage large amounts of independent reading and improvements in reading achievement, including fluency… The available data do suggest that independent silent reading is not an effective practice when used as the only type of reading instruction to develop fluency and other reading skills, particularly with students who have not yet developed critical alphabetic and word reading skills. In sum, methodologically rigorous research designed to assess the specific influences that independent silent reading practices have on reading fluency and other reading skills and the motivation to read has not yet been conducted.

So Janet, it seems that if classroom instruction is not incorporating sufficient opportunities for silent reading, then differences in reading modes may be affecting the students’ ability to demonstrate skills learned in an oral reading environment (classroom instruction) in a silent reading environment (TABE testing). Specific professional development may be needed to help adult educators support student learning in the transferring skills to silent reading assessments.

Jeri Levesque, Ed.D.
Evaluator, LIFT
St. Louis, MO



 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Janet Isserlis <Janet_Isserlis at brown.edu>
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List <familyliteracy at nifl.gov>
Sent: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 10:08 am
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 963] Re: Comprehension MonitoringStrategiesDiscussionBegins Today













All



The answer to this question might be embedded in some of the earlier posts, but I'd like to learn more about how it is that reading aloud ("sounding good" - I think someone said) is and isn't useful as an indicator of reading abilities.



My understanding is that people who can read aloud fairly well are decent decoders.  They can wrest sound out of symbol.  This, however, is not the same as making meaning out of what's been read.  (I know that when I read something aloud, I can't always remember or even make sense of what I'm reading).



We tend to use reading aloud as a way of 'seeing' what learners can do — but it seems to me that this gives us a very incomplete picture.



Janet Isserlis

 





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