Anyone have experience with the Sopris West - REWARDS program to increase reading fluency? I am a parent of a middle schooler. My child needs to improve his fluency and the therapist has recommended reading and rereading texts. The Schwabb website suggests the Sopris West REWARDS program for this. My child’s decoding skills for words in isolation is above grade level, but his fluency is at the bottom of the scale.
Re: Sopris West - REWARDS
I use Rewards with my middle school students. It is a program to teach decoding of multi-syllable words but beginning on lesson 13 it includes sentences and passage reading. Students repeatedly read the passages. They are timed and practice to beat their time. The final reading is read to a partner. They count the number of words read and subtract errors and graph the words read correctly per minute. My students really liked doing the rereadings and the timing. I had everyone read aloud in a whisper and I timed them at the same time. It worked really well and they all showed great progress.
Nan
I think that you could do the same thing without the book. find a passage and read it together’ next have him read it aloud then, read and time for 1 minute, circle the last word and do it again. Box this answer and finally read it again and you mark misread words subtract the errors and graph words read correctly per minute. The passage should be at an instruction level not something that is too easy. It should be a stretch to read it all correctly.
Re: Sopris West - REWARDS
Agree with the other posters about Rewards and repeated readings.
However, you may also want to consider getting a developmental vision evaluation. When a child can decode words in isolation at a high level but has great difficulty with fluency, it usually means there are visual efficiency and/or visual processing issues. Vision therapy is usually very effective in remediating visual efficiency problems (e.g., slow focusing, convergence problems, etc.). Once that is taken care of, Audiblox or PACE are excellent for developing visual processing skills (sequencing, speed, short-term memory, etc.). These types of vision problems do not show up in regular eye exams.
A website with good information about vision is http://www.childrensvision.com. You can find developmental optometrists in your state at http://www.covd.org.
Nancy
It is correct that repeated oral reading at the right level is correct for increasing fluency. My understanding is that REWARDS is to help with decoding multisyllable words. If your child can decode single multi-syllable words well, then I don’t think that would be the best thing. Have you looked at Great Leaps?
Janis