By providing helpful modeling skills, partner work with reading, plays, read aloud and many other helpful reading activities students can become fluent readers. It is hard to say that a child is struggling with reading after assessing them for one minute. There are so many factors that could have interfered with the students ability to read, sickness, cant see, test and performance anxiety, etc. If we help our students engage in reading activities and practices we can help them overcome the fear of reading and foster fluent readers.
Questions to Consider:
1. Did you ever have a hard time passing a reading assessment knowing it was timed? (for instance during the ACT or SAT)
I agree with this! I think that timed tests are very stressful on students of all ages. With a timed test I feel like many worry more about finishing on time than the material that they should be focusing on. I think that alternative measures should be taken when testing the skills of students, however testing can be a complicated thing and all students would have different preferences when it comes to test taking, and this could be difficult, yet possible, to cater to.
ReplyDeleteI loved how Allington suggested the idea of echo reading. It is a great way for children to hear the prosidy in your voice and to hear how text should be read. They are allowed to hear the text read in the proper manner and then have the opportunity to repeat it back.
ReplyDeleteI have never liked trying to read under a time constraint. I remember when they came to test our reading in school. They would just hand us a passage and tell us to read as much of it as we could in a minute (or something like that). I always felt rushed and like it wasn't an accurate representation of my reading skill.
ReplyDeleteI personally never felt like I had comprehension problems UNTIL it was timed for a test. For some reason that clock made all of the sentences jumbled up and impossible to read. I think more practice in reading out loud or even in a classroom where other things may have been going on might have helped with that problem .
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness! Could not agree more! I have always had anxiety in school, and I think being timed for the amount of words I got correct would send me over the edge. I think that there should be other ways implemented to test a child's fluency. These could be giving them a book and having them read a certain number of pages to you. Instead of being timed, record how many they got right for those number of pages. It is still important for them to read the rest of the book. Also, providing opportunities to do plays in class and activities such as this will get their mind off the assessment aspect.
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