Yesterday I went to a "reading academy." The presenter was very pleasant, but some of her ideas I didn't buy. The whole fluency issue is one of these ideas. "
Good readers" read 120 words per minute, she said. Well, I don't think that's true at all. And even if it is true, I don't really care. So what? Presenter tests her kids each week on fluency. They practice a passage and they have one minute to read it. Then they have 30 seconds to retell the passage. It's very important to constantly monitor and assess fluency, she told us. Then she has the kids graph their fluency rates. Kids who aren't improving or who are well below the goal line do feel disappointed, she told us, but "we handle it
positively so it's okay." What the hell? I suggested that everyone start podcasting projects because a byproduct of this cool social action work is that kids do focus on reading with expression and accuracy, but
presenter just nodded and I could tell she wasn't even going to try it. I'm not going to try the timed readings and the graphing, so I guess we're even steven. I did win a pack of pencils in a drawing, so I do thank her for the pencils and for her efforts.
Yesterday I went to a "reading academy." The presenter was very pleasant, but some of her ideas I didn't buy. The whole fluency issue is one of these ideas. "Good readers" read 120 words per minute, she said. Well, I don't think that's true at all. And even if it is true, I don't really care. So what? Presenter tests her kids each week on fluency. They practice a passage and they have one minute to read it. Then they have 30 seconds to retell the passage. It's very important to constantly monitor and assess fluency, she told us. Then she has the kids graph their fluency rates. Kids who aren't improving or who are well below the goal line do feel disappointed, she told us, but "we handle it positively so it's okay." What the hell? I suggested that everyone start podcasting projects because a byproduct of this cool social action work is that kids do focus on reading with expression and accuracy, but presenter just nodded and I could tell she wasn't even going to try it. I'm not going to try the timed readings and the graphing, so I guess we're even steven. I did win a pack of pencils in a drawing, so I do thank her for the pencils and for her efforts.
Comments
jw
My desk is messy. I hate that.
But when I'm reading for pleasure or when I'm really trying to think about the content, I might read a lot slower than that.
OTOH, if I want to burn through something (the newspaper, a trade mag, whatever) I use the speed reading techniques I learned in HS. 500 to 2000 wpm (or some such) is more typical. Back in the day, it was based on "Evelyn Wood's reading dynamics" and included quite a bit of eye-training (bars of light projected on the page, for example), and yes, comprehension tests. But it worked: you can relax and scan through the page and pick up the meaning.
Do you get the beauty of the prose? Not really. Can you miss a crucial point? Yes; especially if the prose is convoluted. But you can also learn to identify those tricky bits and go back to read them again.
My point is that if this expert is trying to identify really slow readers, then 120wpm might be a good threshold. But if the point is to give them the tools to consume knowledge efficiently, then perhaps this is like training for a marathon when the race is really 3k. Or vice versa, maybe not a good analogy.
Or maybe this can wait 'till HS. I'm not an educator and I'm not even a good student.
Bob
Quirky readers we all are.
What's up for TDAY?