Blog 6

In both the Grave's book and the article we had to read this week I learned about the importance of fluency.  Fluency is really amazing when we consider our brain has a hard time attending to one thing at a time.  When we read fluently we are recognizing words as well as reading with reading with the proper phrasing, intonation, and stress.  Not only are we reading the words off the page but we are also processing the words and comprehending them.  While reading fluently we are putting our brain to a lot of work! 

Since our brains are bad at multitasking we must train ourselves to do all of these things automatically.  In order to train our brains both readings stressed the importance of modeling and repetition.  A teacher is responsible for modeling what fluent reading looks like and a student will read the passage after trying to mirror the teacher.  It may take the student several times to develop fluency for a certain passage. 

I really like the Poetry Academy strategy to promote fluency.  In the Poetry Academy the teacher would pick a poem for the students to read out in the hall (for 5-10 minutes) with an aide/volunteer.  The poems were funny or entertaining to keep students' interests.  The volunteer would start by modeling how the poem should be read and then the student would read with the volunteer.  After that the student would read the poem independently aloud.  While the student read indpendently the volunteer would provide assistance and praise.  Then the student would take the poem home and read it to as many people as they could and would have those people sign off verifying they heard the poem.  The following week the student would meet with the volunteer again and read the poem one more time.  The process would then restart.  At the end of the year the class would have a party where they would all read aloud their favorite poems.  Parents were encouraged to attend and snacks were provided.  I like this program because it takes very little time out of the classroom and shows great improvements in the students' reading abilities.  I also like that it gets the family involved and promotes repetition. 

After reading this chapter I have one main question...
When is it appropriate to "force" a student to read aloud?  In the readings I learned that having round robin type reading in your class could be detrimental to some students.  Struggling readers do not want to read in front of the entire class and show that they are struggling.  But I feel like reading aloud in front of people is inevitable.  A student needs to learn to be able to do this.  How would you know the right time to have a student do this?  I would never want to embarass a student, however, I think it is important that they learn to speak/read in front of others.