Who or what did what, when, where, why. And I'm like, oh. I hear it. Just do it automatically, and it's so awesome when they do. I get, like, a little every single time. So excited.
Hi, and welcome back to the Smarter Literacy podcast from Ascend Smarter Intervention, where we simplify effective literacy instruction so every student gets what they need and every educator gets to breathe a little easier. I'm Lindsey. And I'm Corey. And today, we wanted to jump into an important conversation around reading fluency.
Now I know when I first started in Literacy Intervention, I actually really loved focusing on what I thought reading fluency was because it was a really simple data metric to track.
Oh, you mean, like, how nice it is to simply count how many words a student can read correctly one minute and then, like, you're done?
Yes. Yes. It was exactly that. And I was like, great. Check done. I've done the fluency work for today.
Awesome. Right? And I mean, honestly, there are some really great normative references out there that really help us know exactly how many words per minute a student should be reading at each grade level. And so I also felt like this was something really concrete that I could work on and then also to monitor progress.
And so I think, honestly, that is still really good for that. And doing a running record is still one of the number one things that I look for, and I can start to flag whether a student may be struggling with grade level text. So I think it's really important, and I know there's a lot of thoughts and opinions right now on running records, but running records are a really, really great way to see if students are struggling. It is a good way to see where they're at.
It is a good way to progress monitor, but it's not the full picture.
Right. Right. It's gonna be that first dataset that you really kinda may just raise that little red flag. But we do know that there's so much more to fluency than just reading fast. In fact, we don't always want our students to read faster. The goal is actually for our students to read so that they sound like spoken language, so they sound like a real person.
Exactly. Right? Exactly. And the reason for that is because evolutionarily, our brains were designed to interpret spoken language, not written language.
So as we know, that written language was developed so much later in our evolution as humans. And as we've continued to learn and grow, we've relied more on writing and the written word. However, that's just not how we were necessarily wired. And so to comprehend best, we need our reading to basically sound like when we are speaking, which does not always mean reading faster.
You know, sometimes you listen to people talk. I know I do this sometimes. Shrug so fast that you're like, can you slow down? I don't understand what you're saying.
I just stare at them like, wait. What?
Yes.
It's like, are you breathing?
No. And I can't tell you how many students I've had who think that the faster they read, that automatically means the better they're reading. And that is so not true because meanwhile, they may be reading faster, but they're also making a ton of mistakes while they're reading, or they do not sound like a person at all.
And they either sound like the the crazy chipmunk or a really boring robot.
And it takes so much convincing to really get it in through their heads that this isn't actually helping them, that the speed that they're reading it isn't actually helping them become stronger readers because they're not fully comprehending the text because they're not reading it as spoken language. And that's I've had students being like, I don't get it.
Absolutely. No. And I think it makes sense because in so many areas, it does feel like, okay, the faster that you do that, the more efficient that you are. And I think for some students, they tend to rely on reading faster because actually what happens is they realize some of them have working memory difficulties.
And so they're also like, if I read fast enough, I'll be able to remember it. Unfortunately, that just doesn't work that way. It makes sense. I understand what they're trying to do, but that's that's not the reality.
Right. And so now for me as well, realizing that it's not just about measuring what we call CWPM or correct words per minute, I still wanted to give my students practice reading in a way that sounds like spoken language.
And so it started to really come to the question of, well, if it's not just about how fast we read or if we know that that's not the whole picture, then how do we actually support reading fluency? So I had to come back to the drawing board and be like, well, I guess that checkmark in my lesson is now being unchecked. Now what? Frustrating.
Yep. But I think one of the big things that I realized, and we talk about this all the time, if you've listened to our other episodes, whether we were talking about vocabulary or comprehension or writing, one of the things that we always like to do is start with phrasing. And when we think about phrasing, what we want students to really come back to is who or what, did what, when, where, why, or how. And we actually have students scoop their sentences in this way.
So let's think about who or what, did what, when, where, why, or how. And it doesn't always follow that exact order. Right? Sometimes the order will change, but this works really well because instead of basically chunking your sentence into chunk it into three words or five words.
I remember reading that when I first started with literacy intervention where it was like, teach students to read in three to five word chunks. And I was like, okay. But it three or is it five? And then Right.
The kids would get really specific to like, well, here's four words. I'm like, that makes no sense to phrase it right there. You actually need to have that prosody, which is what sounds like spoken language. And that prosody naturally sort of happens when we do the who or what, did what, when, where, why, how.
Your voice is just kind of naturally giving some of that anyway, and so that's the first strategy.
Right. And honestly, this is probably one of my favorite strategies of all time. Getting my students to slow down and break the information apart makes them realize that they're reading for a purpose, not necessarily for speed. And not only that, but they have they stop.
They stop sounding so robotic in the reading because they're like you said, there's a natural porosity there, so they're sounding like real human beings. And they start to notice it too. And I'm like, wait. Who or what did what when, where, why?
And they're like, oh. I hear it. Just do it automatically, and it's so awesome when they do. I get, like, a little Woo.
Every single time.
It's so exciting. It's so exciting. And the other cool thing about that is that that also translates into, one, our comprehension strategy, which we talk about. That's one of our number one comprehension strategies is the five w's, who, what, when, where, why.
So it's immediately supporting comprehension at that sentence level and beyond. But then also the reciprocal writing process because we want them to use that when they're editing and they're writing as well. And so not only are you helping to support reading fluency, but you're helping to build these other pieces too because I know in my lessons, I was like, oh my gosh, if it's not just about measuring how fast they're reading, how do I have time to fit one more thing Right. Into my intervention lesson?
But when you realize, oh no, this is scaffolding up. It's what we're gonna use for comprehension and writing, all of a sudden you're like, okay, I can spend the little bit of time that it takes to do that. Yes. So then once we do that, once we do the who or what, which we like to color code again just because it makes it fun, makes it a little bit more engaging, but who or what in red did what in blue, and then when, where, why, or how in green.
It kinda makes it just this fun color coded process. Then we'll move on to punctuation, and we'll use another color like orange or purple. It doesn't really matter again. It's just whatever.
Whatever you have, honestly, as long as it's not red, blue, or green. Yes. And then we'll have them just highlight or underline the punctuation, and then they can talk about, alright. How does that change the meaning of that particular sentence based off of the punctuation that I have there?
So in our lessons, we often are teaching a specific phonogram pattern. Right? So we might be talking about AI, for example, or a y or o I or o y, something like that. And we just give them sentences that uses that target phonics pattern or that phonogram pattern.
And because we're doing sentence level reading with that pattern anyway, once we have them read that, then you can have them try it with different punctuation. So just let's just take a look at what's there. Oftentimes, sentences usually have a period. But, like, alright.
What if we changed it to an exclamation? What if we turned it into a question? And they can start to see how does that change the intonation of my voice when I am reading this as an exclamation or a punctuation.
It might be something like, I was late to class, or I was late to class, or I was late to class. All of those mean something a little bit different. Yeah. Right?
They carry different meaning, and the way that you would interpret that or comprehend that Yeah.
Is different. Absolutely. And if you haven't ever tried this out with your students, I mean, I I cannot recommend this enough. Kids love doing this.
I don't care what age they are. They love doing this. Having them read a sentence, changing the way that they read it based on the punctuation is such a fun activity for them. And this is where students get to show that creative side, and they love to be creative.
And, I mean, we've said it before in this podcast, sometimes these literacy strategies or, you know, stuff we have to teach them. So boring. It's boring. It's so boring.
And how do we get around that? This is one of the answers. This is one of the ways you get around that. And, again, it's really building comprehension because you're right, I was late to class is so different from, oh my god, I was late to class.
Right? You know, one person's confused. Like, wait, really? And one person's like, oh my god, I can't believe I did this.
Right?
So yeah.
Absolutely. And the other benefit to this strategy, especially if you have groups of students, is that it also gives an opportunity for repeated reads. And repeated reads are a fantastic fluency strategy, but sometimes just having students read the same thing over and over, they're like, I'm over it. I'm not doing that.
But when you do it this way, all of a sudden, it's fun. And it's like, okay, I want you to read it this way, and you to read it this way, and you to read it this way. And it's a good way to scaffold too if you have some students who struggle with reading aloud. Yep.
If they've already heard their peers read it aloud and then they can essentially copy it but but say it with a different punctuation, that can build their confidence too. Absolutely. So I think there's a lot of value a lot of value in that.
And the other thing is is that once it is phrased and students read it aloud with that attention to the phrasing and punctuation, you're gonna pick up again that prosody. And again, even more importantly, it does support that comprehension that we were talking about. Just like you said, it means different things.
And so often when students are trying to read fast, they miss a lot of the punctuation, and all of a sudden you're like, that's not really carrying the meaning Yeah.
That I feel like it should because you just cruised past. You didn't quite realize that that was where something ended and a new idea started, especially when you have dialogue and that kind of thing going on.
Yeah.
And I've never had to teach a student, oh, this ends in a question mark. How would you read it? They automatically know to change that kind of natural, oh, it's a question? Okay. I can change my voice like that. And so this is what I love because it really gets them to, like you said, stop and think about what is that punctuation really doing to the sentence.
And, again, their whole perception of what they're reading changes, especially like we said, if it's dialogue, how the character is reacting maybe in a situation, especially if they're reading a longer paragraph or a longer story.
And they're going to automatically change their voice to match what that sentence is trying to convey.
So again, it's just we are working on fluency, which is, yes, important, but fluency is a means to get to comprehension.
That's what we always want to keep in mind when we're thinking about fluency practice because so much of it is how many words per minute can you get? When really it's, Okay, that's great, but can you also tell me what's going on in the story? Because that's the ultimate goal.
That's such a great point. And I think one of the things that I always tell students is, yeah, we might have a target that we were shooting for for comprehension. A lot of that comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning about that working memory where I don't want you reading so slowly that you actually can't hold on to the information. And so the reason that we want this to become more fluent and more automatic is because then it will support that working memory where we can actually hold on to and retain the information for long enough.
And so if we read so slowly, that's what's at risk. Right. It's not about reading faster, but it is about reading to a way in which we can hold onto understand. And so that's such a great point that that's the end goal is comprehension.
So fluency work is in support of that bigger picture goal always.
And I think, you know, again, this is just such a fun way, a fun way to do it. So coming back, so we're gonna phrase it, who or what, did what, when, where, why, or how. Then we're gonna circle, highlight, whatever that punctuation. I know that there's always that funny thing about, like, let's eat grandma.
Let's eat grandma. Right? Like, alright. Let's pay attention to the the commas in here. They mean something.
It's different.
It's different. Kids love that. Right? So that's really the opportunity that you're getting here. But then, like we said, you can also have students start to completely change expression.
So our next step after doing the phrasing and then the punctuation would be to try it with different expressions. And so, again, if you've got a group of students, have them try it. Somebody's gonna read it excited. Somebody's gonna read it sad.
Somebody's gonna read it like this is the craziest thing they've ever heard in their life, right? And so that can be really fun. And this is something where, you know, I've done a lot of PD trainings and I ask teachers often, what's your favorite thing that you do in your literacy instruction? And so often they'll say things like readers theater or those dramatizations because the kids, it's like you said, it's where they can be creative.
It's where they find their voice. It's where they have fun. And so I think this is a really great way.
Even if you have controlled text sentences that are historically so boring Right.
So boring, one of the ways that we try to make that more fun, at least for my students, is if we are reading, like I said, those sentences where they might be hitting a specific phonogram pattern, is we will have them phrase it, who or what, did what, when, where, why, or how.
Let's try the different punctuation. Now we might have a list of six different expressions, and they can roll a die. Yes.
And they can pick one of those expressions that they're going to read the sentence with, and all of a sudden, it makes something that's normally so boring feel a little bit more fun.
So that's the next step is then to try and do it with different expressions as well. And, again, so much fun. You wanna bring some joy to your class. This is such a great activity to do.
And, again, I I just love how it creates those positive connections with the kids where they're seeing this as fun. Like you said, you eat those really dry text. I'm imagining you even pulling a really boring sentence from, like, a history book and being like, alright, guys. Read this as if it's the most exciting thing in the world.
That's exactly it. That's exactly it.
And it just allows them to have fun and allows them to be creative and allows them to see how language works in a very freeing way, I think.
A hundred percent. And I think you made a great point too. I think you might be listening to this feeling like there is no way I would have time to do this for every sentence. You don't do it for every sentence. So you would pick, for example, if you had a really boring history text, you could pick a few sentences that would help preview that text and do exactly that. So it doesn't need to be every sentence. It's even just a way that you pull out some of them so that you can say, alright, before we start reading, we're gonna go ahead and practice this with a few of our sentences.
And the other beautiful thing there is that then you're also previewing that text to provide some background knowledge, which is gonna be the first step of your comprehension strategy there too. So it's all coming together, but it is offering a little bit of flavor, a little bit of spice into your instruction.
And the good thing here too is that it's not just about previewing text, but we also want students to really think as they're reading, if they get to a sentence, if they couldn't finish and they're like, I have no idea what that meant.
Alright, then we use this strategy. It's the same thing that we would do for decoding. Right? We don't need to use the decoding strategy where we tap out every word that we read.
That's not the goal. Right. The goal is that we recognize when something sounds a little off or a little funky, and then we go and we use this strategy. So it would be the exact same thing where if I have students that are reading aloud and they missed a sentence or something wasn't quite working, say, all right, let's try that sentence again.
Let's try and break that up. Let's figure out the who or what did what. But you want them eventually to get to a point where that's independent for them, where they can realize, oh, I don't know what that means. Let me see if I can't figure out the who or what did what when, where, why, or how in that sentence.
Because that's too where they'll find, oh, I don't know what this word means, so I can't figure out the who or what did what because I don't know what some of these words mean. And that all ties every piece back together.
And, again, we want them doing this independently and also internally, right, because eventually they're going to be asked to read passages quietly to themselves, but we want to make sure that they're still checking it. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've been reading a book and I read a sentence, I'm like, that makes no sense. Let me go back. And maybe I misread a word or I'm just kind of missing the point there, I go back and I reread it and they're like, Oh, now I get it, right?
Even as an adult, I'm doing that because I need to make sure that I'm understanding what's going on, even in a story, even a story that I'm just reading for fun. But if all sudden this sentence doesn't fit the flow of the rest of what's been going on, the dialogue or the rest of the paragraph, I'm like, what? And I just need to go back. And that's, again, another goal we're trying to build for these students that they're just gonna be that independent.
And that's what fluency is, right?
I mean, that's what it is. It's about being able to do something with enough efficiency and automaticity that you recognize, oh, that wasn't right. Let's go ahead and go back. And also, you know, one of the things that I've noticed for some of my students that struggle with fluency is that some of them have a tendency, for example, when they miss something or something doesn't make sense, they go back to, like, the beginning of the paragraph. I'm like, woah. We don't need to go all the way back there.
We can just go back to that that sentence. Or even as we get more efficient, you don't even have to go back to the full start of the sentence. You can go back to if you already were clear on the who or what, you can just go back to, like, the last phrase piece that you didn't understand. And so I think that's all part of it, and it's just about making sure that students start to feel like they have ownership over that.
And so, again, coming back to all of that, I think it really just comes back for me to this not just fast fluency, it's about the phrasing, it's about the punctuation, it's about the prosody, but you can give students a step by step process for that without just saying, oh, that didn't sound fluent. They're like, what does fluent sound like? And so here's a way you can say, okay, fluent sounds like you understand the phrasing, you understand the punctuation, you're able to read it quickly enough that you haven't forgotten the meaning of it. And if you have read it off or slowly or something didn't quite click that you realize, then you go back and you read it again.
And that's it. That's fluency. So Yeah. That's a a short a short bit on fluency.
I think we could talk forever about this. But I think in terms of strategy, try that out. See how that goes. We also have some really helpful strategies.
We've got some graphic organizers that will help to pull this together. So if you do have students that you're working with on fluency and you're feeling like, could just use a little bit of support with this, absolutely check out our Spotlight PD that's called More Than Just Fast Fluency, where we walk step by step on how to build these routines so that students can develop the fluency that they need to comprehend at that deeper level.
And if you just want a simple overview of this routine, you can grab it in our free Smarter Literacy Routines Guide at Smarter Intervention dot com slash guide.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Smarter Literacy Podcast. Make sure to subscribe for more strategies and insights to make delivering effective literacy instruction easy or at least easier. And if you found this episode helpful, share it with a friend or leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcast. It really does help others find the show, and we are beyond grateful for your support.
Thanks for listening. Until next time. Happy teaching.
