Chapter 10: Fluency and Automaticity

The Rhythm of Reading

I learned that reading automaticity refers to a reader's ability to recognize words without conscious decoding" (Beers 205). It was interesting to me to find that student's will learn this automaticity by being exposed to words that they already know how to decode multiple times. For students that learn words quickly and are on there way to being independent readers it only takes them about ten times to see a word and then be able to recognize it. On the other hand, students that are struggling might need to see it forty times (Beers 205). I could not imagine the huge difference. This really shows us that students that struggle need a lot more structure and emphasis put on them for them to be able to learn. Just because they don't get something after the first twenty times, doesn't mean they never will. It might take twenty more times and we have to understand that and be willing to work with them.

The scenario of the two students that we displayed got me thinking about the levels of reading we give students. At the very end of that section it talked about ways to improve the one girl's word recognition and comprehension. The suggestion was probably the one thing, we as teachers don't want to do, give students an easier book. What we need to realize, though is that giving students a book that is to hard for them will make them want to quit altogether. If the student's can't read the book and understand it then they sure aren't going to be able to improve their word recognition or fluency.

Improve Student's Knowledge of High-Frequency Words and Sight Words

I did not know the difference between these two sets of words before I read this chapter, so I thought it would be important for the student's to know, as well as myself. The first set, high-frequency, "are those words that students need to know by sight because they appear so often in texts..."(Beers 212). The second set is sight words, and they are "generally considered to be those words that students need to learn by sight because they don't follow regular decoding rules" (Beers 212). If students learn these words then it will make their job of reading a lot easier and more enjoyable.

Prompt, Don't Correct

I can remember the classrooms I grew up in so clearly and one thing that regularly happened in them is what this section tells us not to do. There is always a couple students that regularly stumble over words, and most of the time the teacher or another student just gives them the word. This is not helping the student, instead it is making them a more dependent reader. What we need to do is prompt them to read the word again or try to sound it out or guess what word would make sense in its place. Also, once the student figures the word out or telling them the word, we can't just let them continue on with the sentence. We need to get them to see and hear the word in the correct context. Our job is not to correct them but to prompt them to try to figure out the word by themselves.

The last and most important thing, is we need to give slow readers the time and chance to read on their own and at their own level! These students probably won't pick up a book outside of school, so it's our job to give them time to read at school. It doesn't matter if they are slow or not, the only way they are going to continue to get better is through reading themselves.