TC Name: Heather Taylor
RICA Domain: Domain 3 “Fluency”
RICA Competency: Competency 9: Fluency: Instruction and Assessment
Grade Level: Second Grade
Any Additional Descriptors: Mainstream with five EL Students
INSTRUCTION:
I observed Mrs. X teaching her students fluency including the key indicators of fluency including accuracy, rate, and prosody. I have witnessed Mrs. X work on fluency one-on-one and in small groups. First, Mrs. X reads a short story to the students with proper rate and expression. This way, the students can hear how the story should be read. Mrs. X then has the students read the same short story and read it out loud. She gives them one minute to read the story to their best ability. Once the minute is up, she has a grid that she colors in a blue shade up to the amount of words the student read (for example, if they read 50 words in one minute she would shade up to 50 on the chart). From there, Mrs. X gives the students feedback as to how well they did or what they need to improve. She reminds them to pause and commas and to take a breath at periods. After she tells them their feedback, they then read the short story together at a proper rate and with proper expression. After this is done, Mrs. X tells the student that they will then re-read the story out loud on their own. She gives them one minute to read the story. She then shades in all of the additional words the child read in red. This way the child can have a visual to how much their fluency has improved. They have a boost of self-esteem when they can see their improvement right in front of them. This strategy allows Mrs. X, to focus on her “struggling” readers (most of whom are ELL students). She is able to give individualized instruction on expression and rate. This is especially beneficial for her EL students because they are able to hear the English language over and over including proper punctuation pauses and the proper English speaking rate.
Mrs. X continually assesses her students’ fluency through oral reading. She pulls “popsicle sticks” through out her class to give everyone a chance to read their text. This way she can see who is improving and who still needs more individualized help throughout the year.
INSTRUCTIONAL SETTING:
Mrs. X has a variety of support for her students to learn fluency in her classroom. She has a wide-range of books in her classroom library along with a listening center where students can listen to books over-and-over. This, again, is extremely helpful for EL students because they can hear how words are pronounced and how punctuation is used in the English language.
