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  Our goal is to:
- Increase fluency speed without losing comprehension
- Increase number of vocabulary seen and heard
Choose a book on tape that is a bit higher than their
reading level and let them follow as they are listening. Tracking is a must to
get all they can out of this exercise. Have them read along out loud a
paragraph per page or more if they want to.
When you are reading to them always have a book for each of
you. Make mistakes and see if they catch them. For a Challenge you could say, “You
only get to miss one mistake or I win”. Example the story says, “the boys were”,
but you read “the dogs were”. Make them humorous to maintain focus.
FLUENCY: Is the speed at which you can correctly use a skill
while maintaining comprehension and accuracy. Increasing the fluency rate
of a skill is just as important to a child's foundation as learning the skill
itself. Fluency rate is not tested by most new state tests; therefore their
test results are somewhat meaningless. This is the support that parents must be
willing to provide, and in doing so you will have a better understanding of
your child's true ability levels.
Once a skill has been acquired the next step becomes
practicing and reviewing the skill to increase the fluency rate of the skill.
 Checking the fluency rate of a math skill can be easily
determined by simply giving a Timed Fact Test. Let's say that your child has
been working on addition by 3's. Giving them a daily 3 minute fact test on 3's
will allow you to see what their fluency rate is. After moving on to other
digits occasionally go back and check the 3's rate to make sure that they
are maintaining and increasing their rate. Making a Daily Challenge
with the timed test can be a way to make the review, practice, and play fun. “If
you beat your best time today then your brother has to do 10 push-ups, but if
you don't beat your time you have to give mom a 3 minute neck rub.”
Reading fluency is also very easy to monitor. Choose a text
that your child has been reading or can read without much difficulty. Have them
read out loud to you for one minute while you are counting mistakes as they
read.  After you say “STOP,” count the number of words read and then subtract
the number of mistakes. This is their score. You can do this on a daily basis
with the same story then after a few days change stories. As time goes by
return to that first story, time it, and compare score to previous score.
Checking the fluency rate of individual reading skills is
not as important as comprehension fluency. However you can have fun and
motivate children ages 3-5 by timing them matching pictures to a words
first sounds, or having older children match synonyms/antonyms ECT.
For more on these concepts, see:
The National
Institute for Literacy
Preschool
Brain and Development
“What do
Studies of the Brain Tell Us?”
“Make Your Child Smarter”
Reading
Rockets
Learning
Activities for the 6-10 year-olds
If you new that your 12 year old child was going to
spend a year in Mexico, would you allow him to go if he only had a simple
understanding of Spanish our would you make sure he was as fluent as possible
before he left? Why don't we expect our children to be as fluent as
possible in math and reading before we send them to middle school?
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