Independent instructional frustration

Fluency: An Introduction | Reading Rockets

Even when students recognize many words automatically, their oral reading still may be expressionless, not fluent. To read with expression, readers must be able to divide the text into meaningful chunks. Readers must know to pause appropriately within and at the ends of sentences and when to change emphasis and tone. For example, a reader who lacks fluency may read, probably in a monotone, a line from Bill Martin Jr's Brown Bear, Brown Bear as if it were a list of words rather than a connected text, pausing at inappropriate places:

Brown/
bear brown/
bear what/
do/
you see.

A fluent reader will read the same line as:

Brown bear/
Brown bear/
What do you see?/

The difference between fluency and automaticity

Although they terms automaticity and fluency often are used interchangeably, they are not the same thing.

Automaticity is the fast, effortless word recognition that comes with a great deal of reading practice. In the early stages of learning to read, readers may be accurate but slow and inefficient at recognizing words. Continued reading practice helps word recognition become more automatic, rapid, and effortless.

Automaticity refers only to accurate, speedy word recognition, not to reading with expression. Therefore, automaticity (or automatic word recognition) is necessary, but not sufficient, for fluency.

Fluency instruction

Fluency is not a stage of development at which readers can read all words quickly and easily. Fluency changes, depending on what readers are reading, their familiarity with the words, and the amount of their practice with reading text. Even very skilled readers may read in a slow, labored manner when reading texts with many unfamiliar words or topics. For example, readers who are usually fluent may not be able to read technical material fluently, such as a textbook about nuclear physics or an article in a medical journal.

It is important to note that fluency instruction should be with a text that a student can read at their independent level. It is at this level where students are able to practice on speed and expression rather than decoding. The chart below describes each reading level:

In an effort to help teachers gain knowledge on fluency instruction, researchers have investigated two major instructional approaches related to fluency. In the first approach, repeated and monitored oral reading (commonly called "repeated reading"), students read passages aloud several times and receive guidance and feedback from the teacher. In the second approach, independent silent reading, students are encouraged to read extensively on their own.

Repeated and monitored oral reading

Repeated and monitored oral reading improves reading fluency and overall reading achievement.

Students who read and reread passages orally as they receive guidance and/or feedback become better readers. Repeated oral reading substantially improves word recognition, speed, and accuracy as well as fluency. To a lesser but still considerable extent, repeated oral reading also improves reading comprehension. Repeated oral reading improves the reading ability of all students throughout the elementary school years. It also helps struggling readers at higher grade levels.

Traditionally, many teachers have relied primarily on round-robin reading to develop oral fluency. In round-robin reading, students take turns reading parts of a text aloud (though usually not repeatedly). But round-robin reading in itself does not increase fluency. This may be because students only read small amounts of text, and they usually read this small portion only once.

Researchers have found several effective techniques related to repeated oral reading:

• students read and reread a text a certain number of times or until a certain level of fluency is reached. Four re-readings are sufficient for most students.
• oral reading practice is increased through the use of audiotapes, tutors, peer guidance, or other means.

In addition, some effective repeated oral reading techniques have carefully designed feedback to guide the reader's performance.

Silent, independent reading

No research evidence is available currently to confirm that instructional time spent on silent, independent reading with minimal guidance and feedback improves reading fluency and overall reading achievement.

One of the major differences between good and poor readers is the amount of time they spend reading. Many studies have found a strong relationship between reading ability and how much a student reads. On the basis of this evidence, teachers have long been encouraged to promote voluntary reading in the classroom. Teacher-education and reading-education literature often recommends in-class procedures for encouraging students to read on their own, such as Silent Sustained Reading (SSR) or Drop Everything and Read (DEAR).

Research, however, has not yet confirmed whether independent silent reading with minimal guidance or feedback improves reading achievement and fluency. The research suggests that direct instruction in reading is the best predictor of reading achievement. However, it is important for students to be given time to apply their reading skills through silent reading with a book at their independent level (read with 95% word accuracy).

Why Instructional-Level Text (Usually) Isn't Enough for Lower Readers

Do you have any students in your class who aren’t yet reading at grade level?

Even if those lower students are making progress, they still may not be “bridging the gap.”

(In other words, the higher readers are making progress, too. And the lower readers are still behind, even though they may be getting better every day.)

So how do we bridge the gap?

That’s exactly what I’m going to tackle in this blog post!

Years ago, when I was getting my master’s degree in literacy leadership (at the University of Illinois at Chicago), I worked in the university literacy clinic.

At the clinic, we served struggling readers in elementary school and high school. We were tasked with having students read grade-level text, even though the students’ independent reading levels were significantly lower.

This approach was a bit different from what I’d learned about teaching reading, especially to struggling readers.

Before that, I’d always been told to use instructional-level text.

Instructional-level text is text that’s slightly harder than what a student can read independently. The idea is that the student can be successful with that challenging text, given teacher support.

In theory, instructional-level text can help bring kids forward in their reading. They’re being challenged by the text, but not so much that they’re overwhelmed or unable to grasp the text.

Going beyond instructional-level text

At the reading clinic, however, we were going over students’ instructional level. In some cases, we went way over!

Our professor (Dr. Tatum) explained that if students are always given instructional-level text, then they may not ever “bridge the gap” and catch up to their peers.

That idea made a lot of sense to me. (And I also saw that it really worked! The 7th grade student I worked with really did improve in her reading!)

Yet…I also don’t believe that reading grade-level text is always enough to help lower readers “bridge the gap.”

My experience has shown me that students who read below grade level (and all students, really) should read texts at a variety of levels, not just instructional-level and/or grade-level text!

This concept is similar to the act of climbing stairs.

If some students are currently at the “bottom stair” (aka reading far below grade level), working in grade-level text likely won’t help them magically leap up the stairs.

In this example, there are multiple steps in between the student’s current reading level and grade-level text. (This image shows two steps, but obviously, the actual number of steps would vary.)

I propose that we give students opportunities to read books at a variety of levels.

For lower readers, this means having them read texts:

• At their independent reading level (on their own)
• At their instructional level (with teacher support…or maybe even on their own sometimes!)
• At grade-level (with teacher support)
• At levels BETWEEN their instructional level and grade level

Whoa. That’s a lotta levels!

But this actually isn’t very difficult in practice. It just means that we choose texts at different levels for our small-group reading instruction / guided reading.

(By the way, if you’d benefit from having passages at a variety of levels so you can make this happen, check out my First & Second Grade Literacy Club. Members get new passages every month!)

When we give students a more challenging text, we also have to provide them with appropriate support. We can’t just hand them grade-level text and expect magic to happen!

In my next post, I’ll explain specific strategies to help any student successfully read challenging text. Stay tuned!

Second diagnosis. Why depression has become an independent epidemic against the backdrop of covid

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The coming year will be the third year of life in a pandemic. COVID-19 has had a huge impact not only on physical health, but also on the mental state of people. According to Hans Kluge, Director of the WHO European Office, the pandemic has become a huge shock for the whole world, deprived people of their livelihoods, separated relatives, colleagues and neighbors, which “has had an extremely difficult impact on the mental health and well-being of the inhabitants of the European Region”.

The pandemic and mental health

The Columbia University School of Public Health conducted a comprehensive study of the effects of the pandemic on mental health. We analyzed data from Pubmed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, medRxiv and other databases and assessed the condition of more than 226,000 people in 60 studies. The study found that the global prevalence of depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic was 24% and 21%, respectively, and was highly dependent on the region. For Europe, depression rates were 26%, for Asia 15-20% (with the lowest numbers in China), for other non-Asian regions 39%. Similar trends have been identified for anxiety disorders.

At the same time, in all regions, the indicators differed several times from pre-Covid values ​​upwards. Thus, for the Asian region, pre-Covid prevalence rates for anxiety disorders were in the region of 2.1-4.1% against an average of 18% during the pandemic. The researchers believe that the deterioration in people's mental health can be seen not as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, but as an independent parallel epidemic.

Separately, the impact on the mental state is not so much the pandemic itself, but the measures that states used to combat it. The closure or restriction of transport, schools, public institutions, social distancing measures, the need to stay at home - all this has affected the severity and prevalence of disorders.

Risk groups

Mental health specialists have identified groups of people whose psyche is more vulnerable to the negative impact of the epidemic. First of all, these are the elderly people with chronic diseases who are at increased risk of contracting COVID-19. The second group is children and adolescents who experience additional stress due to changes in the usual educational format and related restrictions. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), one in seven children has been directly affected by the lockdown, and more than 1.6 billion children have been affected by the lockdown to some degree.

Also affected by the pandemic are people with mental disorders, including those with substance use problems. People prone to anxiety and worry, especially about their health, and people who have experienced a traumatic event. The risk group includes lonely people who do not have social support, doctors and other health workers who work directly with the sick, which often leads to physical and psycho-emotional overload. Based on 65 studies conducted in 21 countries and including data from 97,300 healthcare workers, the prevalence of depression among them was 21.7%, anxiety disorder - 22.1% and post-traumatic stress disorder - 21.5%.

Against the backdrop of a global increase in anxiety and depression, there are aspects that the pandemic has positively affected. People began to pay more attention to maintaining a healthy lifestyle, physical and mental health. Forced measures of social isolation have increased the value of interpersonal interaction. The ability to work remotely has given many more flexibility in balancing their professional and personal lives. As a result, the amount of time that people began to spend with loved ones has not only increased, but its quality has changed for the better. There are also opposite trends in intra-family interaction: the pandemic has exacerbated the problems of psychological and physical violence in families in which they were present before it.

Solutions

Psychologists, together with doctors, have developed universal recommendations that will help reduce the impact of stress on mental health.

Body care:

• Eat healthy. Avoid tobacco, alcohol, limit caffeine, which can aggravate stress and sleep problems;

Mental care:

• Hobbies, cleaning, cooking, new projects interrupt negative thought cycles that feed anxiety and depression;

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