Read Naturally

It doesn’t test fluency if that is what you mean by assess. It helps improve fluency in reading. It does have a small comprehension portion where the child has to first write down what they know about the topic they are reading about and then they answer questions at the end of the reading….

Bad assumption that comprehension increases with fluency. Of course, real fluency means comprehension; but too many people think wrongly that fluency is the same as speed. So comprehension is often sacrificed to get the highest possible words per minute.

Victoria:

I know that comprehension does not necessarily improve with fluency, but often it does. I also realize that comprehension strategies must be taught in addition to developing fluency. Please let me know if I’m on track here.

Thanks,

Margo

I like read naturally, I use it if at all possible, when I am finished with Phono-graphix. I won’t use it until my students are decoding on or close to grade level. I really like it because it makes the students in charge of their education, helps self-esteem, and it continues to reinforce good reading habits. I also like it because it will give me time to work with students that may need additional practice in the error correction phase of PG.

well, like anything else, some people need a lot more teaching than others. For instance, Reading something and knowing it’s most important point is something that comes naturally to soem; other people don’t organize the input as it goes in and have to be taught how. Another example: sometimes a bright kiddo wiht a good memory can get by on being able to retrieve stuff quickly so it doesn’t have to be organized… but when this kid who is so bright is expected to do that with more and more, the problems come along unless they can shift gears and try a new approach.

This is the program they use at my child’s school for pull out reading and it seems they tend to base her reading on it.Her fluency has gone up–but I don’t think it should be the only program used.They had phased out the phonics which I still believe she needs because she has not retained enough to sound out correctly.I am having her tutored and we still sound out unkown words.I can’t see how a child’s fluency couldn’t go up with the program as it is repeated so many times it is memorized by the testing time.Try to get the child to read it another day without the repeated reading and it is just like starting all over again.They said my daughter was doing well in reading, comprehending better than the other children and I credit the tutor for the phonics she provides and the explode the code workbook which gives pictures so the words have more meaning.Maybe it was the way it was administered by the assistants but I think The Read Naturally program could be more productive if unkown words that were circled were sounded out , pictures drawn ,definitions provided before starting to listen to the tape.

Read Naturally is only a supplimental reading program, never to be used as the only program. If it is just used as the only program, it is the same as whole language.

Yes, comprehension strategies do need to be taught, definitely..

I am very confused about what people call “fluency”. To my mind, if you can decode effectively and can pronounce words at a speaking pace, and you comprehend well and remembner what you read, you have good fluency; but if you race through very fast and can’t remember a thing then you haven’t actually *read* anything at all, and that can’t possibly be called fluent. But I’m now seeing a huge stress on speed and words per minute, without much questioning of how much is understood or retained, and it looks to me like a return of 1950’s stuff in sheep’s clothing.

As long as people are using, or rather misusing, the word “fluency” to mean only speed drills and memorization in the guise of reading, I’m not going to teach it and I’m going to recommend to others not to teach it. That didn’t work in the 1950’s and it still doesn’t.

See the journal article “How Fast are the World’s Best Readers?” (sorry, I don’t have the source), from around 1980, for a look at the uselessness of speed drilling that is both scholarly and funny.

victoria wrote:
Victoria,

> I am very confused about what people call “fluency”. To my
> mind, if you can decode effectively and can pronounce words
> at a speaking pace, and you comprehend well and remembner
> what you read, you have good fluency; but if you race through
> very fast and can’t remember a thing then you haven’t
> actually *read* anything at all, and that can’t possibly be
> called fluent. But I’m now seeing a huge stress on speed and
> words per minute, without much questioning of how much is
> understood or retained, and it looks to me like a return of
> 1950’s stuff in sheep’s clothing.
>

as a mother of a child that has many problems and lack of fluency being one of them, I am very much supporting the trend to assess the fluency. The reason being: even if my child can decode (which he can although also not at a grade level) reads accurately, but he reads with a speed of 28 wpm (which he did last summer before he was entering 4th grade) it is virtually impossible for him to get any information from reading in reasonable time frame. It would have taken him 3 times longer to read the same paragraph when compared with his peers, which means in the assign time frame he is absolutely unable to finish his work even if he works very hard. So the assessment of fluency can serve students to justify the need to receive services to help them become independent readers. If they are left with such slow reading skills they will never be able to finish their work at school, even if they have reasonably good decoding skills. Thus, I firmly believe that fluency needs to be assessed to provide services to help these students and also to provide them with accommodations, so they can function in school without too much stress.

Ewa

> As long as people are using, or rather misusing, the word
> “fluency” to mean only speed drills and memorization in the
> guise of reading, I’m not going to teach it and I’m going to
> recommend to others not to teach it. That didn’t work in the
> 1950’s and it still doesn’t.
>
> See the journal article “How Fast are the World’s Best
> Readers?” (sorry, I don’t have the source), from around 1980,
> for a look at the uselessness of speed drilling that is both
> scholarly and funny.

Well, 28 words per minute is below even normal speaking pace, and yes, that is slow enough to be a concern. But what I am saying is that drilling for *only* speed is usually counterproductive — it has to be decoding, accuracy, comprehension, and then the speed can come and be useful.

Where can I purchase the program “Read Naturally?”

Several comments: worries about a return to the 50’s - for some of my research I went all the way back to the 20’s. I’d be more worried about someone in reading who wanted to go back to the 90’s to see what was up.

Speed - as much as some don’t like it - think it’s competitive, etc. - reading speed must approach the rate of conversation for there to be decent comprehension - especially at intuitive levels. Speed alone is obviously useless, but when trained with intonation - with the child’s world view being nourished - FLUENCY emerges.

In summation, it’s obviously more than speed - fluency is a combination of speed, accuracy, intonation, world experience, and comprehension. Then we could go into the behavioral elements of reading fluency……but then again….sounds like a college course to me.

College courses are, in my opinion, good…as is old dusty stuff if considered on the time continuum to present.

http://www.readnaturally.com/

http://www.resourceroom.net/myarticles/wlpaper.htm

Hmmm… I know lots of my sources for this were in the 60’s …