ELLEN DEWITT Action Research: Expression & Fluency 1 st grade

Research Question What are the most effective strategies for improving expression?

Initial Meeting with Ms. Gartman Number of students I would be working with: 2 Working with higher-level students Same reading level Determined the needs of each student: Fluency, primarily expression Good readers, but need to take the next step towards reading fluently and with expression  Students often read past punctuation and have trouble with phrasing, as well

Researching Best Practices Reading fluency is defined as reading using grade- level-appropriate rate, accurate and effortless word automaticity, proper expression or prosody, correct phrasing or chunking, and also comprehension (Reutzel and Cooter, 2012). However, fluency often gets neglected and or is one of the last areas of reading to get attention (Groves Academy School, 2012).

Researching Best Practices Children should hear a range of texts read fluently with much expression (Texas Education Agency, 2002 ) Appropriately challenging materials (Reutzel and Cooter, 2012) Fluent reading should be modeled (Texas Education Agency, 2002).  Gives meaning to the text  Examples and non-examples

Strategies to Improve Fluency Read often… Practice! (Reutzel and Cooter, 2012) Choral reading (Hasbrouck, 2006) Cloze reading (Hasbrouck, 2006) Repeated reading (Groves Academy School, 2012) Partner reading (Hasbrouck, 2006) Reader’s Theater (Texas Education Agency, 2002)

Baseline Data Multidimensional Fluency Scale Comprehensive Oral Reading Fluency (CORF) Scale National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Fountas & Pinnel Running Records from cooperating teacher Interest Inventory

Baseline Data

Strategies Used Modeled fluent reading and non-fluent reading Choral Reading  Passages from Magic Tree House and Junie B. Jones books Repeated Reading  Fluency Sentence Strips Expression Spinner Fluency Voice Jar

Midpoint Assessment/Data Had best results from Multidimensional Fluency Scale, so used for midpoint assessment After meeting with group, noticed that students were having the most trouble changing their voice with different punctuation

Strategies Used Modeled fluent reading and non-fluent reading  Yo! Yes? By Chris Raschka “Punctuation and My Voice” chart and example sentence strips Reader’s Theater  Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss

Final Assessment/Data Used Multidimensional Fluency Scale in order to stay consistent and to get sufficient data for all three assessments Both students improved immensely

Student Growth

Reflection An overall, very good experience Patience is very important… a semester’s length process My students learned a lot and loved working with me Every time they filled out progress monitoring chart, I asked them what they learned the previous session  Always remembered Went from good readers who read the words to read to words, to fluent, expressive readers  Both ended at level 4 on Multidimensional Fluency Scale You can have a reader at a high reading level, but this does not necessarily mean they are fluent readers, comprehend what they read, etc. Have to look at not only the fluency scales, but remember how they read orally to know what to change next time  Punctuation was the biggest thing

References GrovesAcademySchool. (n.d.). Strategies for developing reading fluency [Video file]. Retrieved from Hasbrouck, J. (2006). Developing fluent readers. Reading Rockets. Reutzel, R., & Cooter, R., Jr. (2012). Reading Fluency. In Teaching Children to Read: The Teacher Makes the Difference (7th ed., pp ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. Texas Education Agency. (2002). Fluency: Instructional guidelines and student activities. Reading Rockets.