Over on Sound it Out, Joanne Meier of Reading Rockets had a nice piece about fluency that deserves to be read. She describes situations in which the usual assessment of fluency, words read per minute, trumped the sensible reason for promoting fluency in reading: comprehension. Professor Meier’s account aptly reminds me of the importance of keeping perspective in teaching effectively.
We have to be careful to communicate to our students that some of our teaching actions may appear more important than they are. We don’t want them to get the idea that the timing of reading is a race with high stakes. (That’s why we do it repeatedly.) We don’t want them to think that they should obey our directions because it is a matter of complying alone, but that there is a reason behind our expectations (authoritative rather than authoritarian). We want to communicate clearly, so when something like timed readings is the issue, we should treat it matter-of-factly…not quite ho-hum, but surely not like speed is the end in itself.
Link to the Sound it Out article.
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