From Word Study to Fluency to Proficient

Reading
Dr. Tim Rasinski

timrasinski.com

September 30, 2015

Intro (The Garden Song, see last page): Why are songs and rhythmic poetry important?
Its fun. Our brain releases more endorphins & serotonin when we are singing. School isnt as
much fun as it used to befor teachers or kids.
Its cultural. Students today in America dont have a good sense of what it means to be
American. Robert Pinsky said we carry our culture on the backs of American song & rhetoric.
Think about Yankee Doodleclose to 80 versions written by Americans sharing culture.
o The Battle Cry of Freedom by George F. Root
o Over There
o Civil Rights movement songs
o Four Dead in Ohio by Neil Young
o Back to School songs
o Military Service songs in conjunction with God Bless America (written by Irving Berlin ,
first performed on November 11th by Kate Smith)
Could present on November 10th
Woody Guthrie so taken by God Bless America that he wrote his own song from
the common persons perspective: This Land is Your Land
Invites discussion.
Its aesthetic. Louise Rosenblatt said that there are two types of reading, efferent reading and
aesthetic reading
o Efferent reading: reading to take away particular bits of information. Here, the
reader is not interested in the rhythms of the language or the prose style but is focused
on obtaining a piece of information. Rosenblatt states, the readers attention is
primarily focused on what will remain as a residue after the reading the information
to be acquired, the logical solution to a problem, the actions to be carried out.
o Aesthetic reading: reading to explore the work and oneself. Here, readers are
engaged in the experience of reading, itself. Rosenblatt states, In aesthetic reading,
the readers attention is centered directly on what he is living through during his
relationship with that particular text. [110, p. 25 ]
Its reading!
o Question Everything Albert Einstein
Its not asking kids to question things, but to ask good questions.
Questioning oral reading when compared to silent reading.
You hear yourself
Youre articulating the sounds of the language
Give yourself something thats meant to be read orally (songs!); meant to
be read repeatedly
Research Promotes the Use of Songs, Poems to Promote Reading:
Name that Word: Using song lyrics to improve the decoding skills of adolescents with learning
disabilities, Sara J. Hines
Reading Psychology, pg 29: Using an interactive singing software program: A comparative
study of struggling middle school readers
Building Fluency, Word recognition ability and confidence in struggling readers, Lori Wilfgong
Whats the perfect text for struggling readers? Try Poetry! Tim Rasinksi

Rasinski puts together a songbook for each child based on unit themes: Old Familiar Love Songs for
Valentines Day, Football Fight Songs, Fall and Back-to-School Songs, America, My Book of
Mother Goose Rhymes, etc.

Surface level
Deep level
Noam Chomsky said that language had two levels of structure: surface and deep. The surface
level of language is the sounds that Im making; the deep level is what youre doing with those
sounds. You have to turn them into meaning.
Rasinski shared an example of when he read part of a story aloud and the students finished it by
themselves. The part read aloud had much deeper comprehension than the part that was read
independently. Why? When an adult takes care of the surface level (phonics, spelling,
vocabulary, automaticity, prosody) then the kids are able to pick up on the deeper level
(background knowledge, comprehension strategies) better.

Teaching kids about words

Word Game for kids: Word Ladders (start at the bottom; give a clue for each rung of the ladder)
Put the first and last words together what to you get?
Add a letter to make a mechanism to draw oil or water out of the ground
Young dog
Mug, drink coffee out of
Wear on your head
Gooey from tree
A small drink
a poor choice in a religious context
a sharp object
Three letter word for a family member

FREE

pumpki
n
pump
pup
cup
cap
sap
sip
sin
pin
kin

example: Ship Ahoy Word Ladder (p.s. you can actually Google a lot of these for free)

Automaticity: the ability to quickly recognize words

David LaBerge

Goal of phonics instruction is to get kids not to use

it.
Think about learning to drive a car: you remember learning it, but you dont have to think about it now. It just happens
automatically. You have accuracy now; youre not hitting things. You have automaticity; you drive places and youre
not even really sure how you got there.

The Adventures of Runny Babbit, by Shel Silverstein: Shel switches the first letters of the words.
Reading these poems and trying to comprehend gives you a good example of how comprehension is more
difficult when your automaticity is limited.
A dogs tail wagging is an indicator of its disposition. Can we make them happy by wagging their tail for
them? No. We cannot force a kid to read faster. We can do things to make them become faster readers.

A fluent reader isnt someone who reads fast; they are reading with expression, changing their voice, their
rate, adding pauses when appropriate. Think of the word Dude. Now say it with varying expressions: 1.
As you say hi. 2. If youre upset with someone. 3. You

Fluency Sentences: Try reading the following.

The old man the boat.
Problem: youre likely reading it with old man as the subject vs. the old as the subject and man as the
verb.
Should be read as: The old man the boat.
Woman without her man is nothing.
Read as: Woman. Without her, man is nothing.
Tom borrowed my new lawnmower.
If you have multiple lawnmowers and he borrowed your newest one: Tom borrowed my new lawnmower.
If you only have one and want to emphasize who took it: Tom borrowed my new lawnmower.

Compare FLUENCY scores to SILENT READING ACHIEVEMENT SCORES:

Children rated as a 4 had 249 as an achievement score (6 th grade comprehension level)
Children rated as a 3 got 229.
Children rated as a 2 got 207.
Children rated as a 1 got 179. This equates to a 2nd grade comprehension level.
We want to raise the comprehension score, no matter the grade level. To improve this, we work on all the
stuff above the line (surface level) phonics, spelling, vocabulary, automaticity, prosody.

So how do songs relate? Well, we build vocabulary.

We sing a song repeatedly, which builds automaticity.
Songs have rhythm, rhyme, melody and prosody.
So,

HOW DO WE TEACH IT?

TEACHING VOCABULARY
Is it really reading if I have the song memorized?

If this is a concern for you, you can find other versions of the same song.
o Take Me Out to the Ballgame; Take Me Out of the Bathtub; etc. Melody is the same but youre
back to looking at the words. (See link for book full of nonsense versions of familiar songs.)
Fun fact: Dave Pilkey was one of Tim Rasinskys students!
o Bruce Lansky gigglepoetry.com
Take words from the song/poem out of context and into isolation HARVESTING WORDS
o Use literary terms and put them on the word wall
Whenever you read to your kids, ask the kids for 5-6 interesting words (the harvest)
that you can define and discuss, then put these words up on the word wall
o Example: Caleb and Kate, by William Steig
fierce, quarrel, odious, cantankerous, hoddy doddy

If these were from a song, you would have the words memorized, but in isolation
students must decipher which one is which
Vocabulary Declines, With Unspeakable Results Article : Students don't learn new words by studying
vocabulary lists. They do so by guessing new meanings within the overall gist of what they are hearing or
reading. And understanding the gist requires background knowledge.

Learning the Fry 600 Words list: accuracy is not good enough. It must be automatic, because
these words show up so often in your reading that if you have to sound them out, youll be bogged down
and unable to understand what youre reading.
o Add them to the word wall (do 10 a week)
o Send home over summer as homework
o READ a lot! Every story is a high frequency word story they are high frequency because they
show up a lot!

Play word games

o
o
o
o
o

Word Bingo
Word Ladders (see previous example, links)
Words in a Word
Word Building
Article, McCandliss et. al.: Focusing Attention on Decoding for Children With Poor
Reading Skills: Design and Preliminary Tests of the Word Building Intervention
Making Words Pat Cunningham
Everyone has nine letters in front of them (e,e,i,d,n,p,r,s,t); teacher guides the
students to spell words with clues (red, rid, ride, pride, president)
Could be done with writing, so you dont have to cut out all the letters.
Making and Writing words, K-2
Making and Writing words, 3-5

Example: vowels (eeeei) consonants (cddnnnp)

o If you dont get it, you can look up at the teacher because this is done
whole-group. The teacher says the word, how to spell it; students
repeat the word, how to spell it.
o Mark a silent letter with a no sign, mark a sight word with a heart
(must learn by heart), mark a blend with >

1. Pi

6. Change a letter,
someone who is kind to
you is
nice (silent)

11. To rely on someone, word

deed but add two letters
depend (nd is >)

2. Add a letter to make

the pie you eat

7. Add a letter, my uncles

daughter

12. Word deed, add two

letters, past tense of deny

pie (silent)
3. Change a letter, what
happens at the end of
our life

niece (heart)
8. Prefix, working on de

denied
13. Use all letters

die (silent)
4. Add a letter to die,
make a fancy word for
eating supper
dine (silent)

deed (second e is silent)

independence

9. Add two letters to make

a new word, you are
certain about something

**** THE LAST WORD IS A KEY

WORD.*****

indeed (second e is silent)

It should tie to your unit

somehow! For instance, chose

5. Change a letter, make

a word that is a small
cube and has dots on it
dice (silent)

10. 4 letters in dice,

rearrange them, add a
letter, make a choice

to make 13 words because of

13 colonies.

decide

Wordsmith.org/anagram will give you all possible words within a word; you choose the words youd like
to use in your lesson

o Teach Latin/Greek roots

Transfer boxes at the bottom of the making/writing word pages are key. Now youre no longer
restricted to the letters given by the teacher at the beginning.
In example above, where independence was final word, focus on pend root. Means hang or
weigh. 1. Pending (hanging on) 2. Append (attach) 3. Appendix (attached to your colon; attached to
a document) 4. Appendage (body part attached to main part of body) 5. Pendant (hangs on a piece of
jewelry) 6. Pendulum (part of a clock, that hangs) 7. Suspend (hang) 8. Suspenders (pants hang from
them), suspendsion (show kids how d was dropped, but was once part of the word laziness, easier to
pronounce without the dreferred to as clipping words) suspension (the state of being suspended,
or held up)
o Knowing the roots helps kids figure out new, harder words: compendium
o Students go from knowing none of these words to learning all of them by understanding the
root meaning
o Teach 1 root/week: Our brains are pattern detectors. Why not work with that?
o Use divide and conquer approach
o Article: The Latin-Greek Connection, Building Vocabulary through Morphological Study
(Scroll down to the second article)
o

Teach Word Families

o Adding a beginning letter to certain word families, students can decode 654 onesyllable words
o Decodable books (highlight specific letter combinations ) Miss Mog, Mr. Zag think
twice about what youre using to teach the skill making up a poem is more
meaningful and fun to the kids than a pre-printed decodable book that has no real
meaning

Teach idioms
o Idiomconnection.com
o Theres a Frog in my Throat book, Loreen Leedy
o Ask students to do a particular writing assignment using as many idioms as possible
o Example of writing primarily with idioms (seen in a cooking magazine): You're a Sage,
Rosemary

HOW DO I FIT THIS IN TO MY SCHEDULE?????

All of these activities are research-based. But teaching is not just a science, it is an art. You have to figure
out how to work it into your curriculum. These are colors on your palette, but you must choose which ones
work for you.

TEACHING FLUENCY
Accuracy in word recognition
Model fluent reading
Assisted reading (I cant do it by myself, but I can do it with someone)
Practice (wide reading, deep/repeated reading)
Phrasing (good readers word in phrases, poor readers read word by word)
Synergy (synthesize; put all of these things together) fluency development lesson

Model fluent reading

o Read alouds
More motivating. Kindergartners have the highest motivation to read; 12 th graders
have the least motivation. Each year, kids interest in reading drops. The best way to
fight that is to read aloud to students.
Builds vocabulary (especially when you harvest words)
Builds comprehension
Models what fluency really looks like; talk about the teachers reading in addition to
what the story is about
How did my voice change? Why did my rate of reading change?
Read in a disfluent manner, see how students react (once slowly in a robotic
word-by-word way, once rapidly, with no pausing)

Assisted Reading
o Analogous to learning to ride a bike
Hold students up for a little while until theyre ready to go on their own
o Variety of forms
Choral reading (group, antiphonal alternating boys and girls or group 1 and group
2, echo, cumulative one group at a time, once you join in you stay in; see example
below. Students join in on the line next to the letter group denoting the first letter of
his/her name.)
A-C
D-F
G-I
J-L
M-N
O-Q
R-S
T-U
V-Z

1. I pledge allegiance
2. to the flag
3. of the United States of America
4. And to the republic
5. For which it stands
6. One nation
7. Under God
8. Indivisible
9. With Liberty and Justice for all

This type of reading helps children focus on the words even for texts that are
memorized. You can do this backwards, too, having all students begin and
drop out on the line next to the letter group denoting the first letter of his/her
name. The more you change up the choreography, the more students focus
on the written words.

paired reading (neurological impress reading)

audio-assisted reading
In a 27-week intervention, students received a daily 15-25-minute
instructional intervention in which they read along silently while
listening to the same passages on tape. Average student gain was
2.2 years; some students gained as much as 4 years progress in
reading in the of a year intervention.
Audacity audio recorder
captioned video text
make a suggestion to parents to turn closed captioning on tv; even if it only
helps one child, its free!
document camera
read the book and show tracking print on the screen

Practice
o Wide Reading - reading independently from a variety of texts to increase vocabulary, word
recognition and knowledge
o Deep Reading (Repeated Reading, Close reading) reading a text several times until it can
be read with appropriate fluency that reflects and enhances the meaning of the passage
These passages arent terribly long, but students need to read them over and over

again
In studies, students who practiced reading a passage got a little better with each
read. By the second passage, despite the 2nd passage being more difficult than the
1st passage, the first read of the 2nd passage was better than the 1st read of the 1st
passage. With each additionally practiced passage, student performance increased.
Repeated practice through Readers theater, poetry, song lyrics, speeches & oratory
(americanrhetoric.com), cheers, chants, monologues, dialogues, journal entries, letters
On Presidents Day, students can recite snippets of speeches theyve been given
from the site above. Teacher can invite parents on the day speeches are given.
Students and parents listen and guess which president gave each speech.
Article: I Never Thought I Could be a Star : A Readers Theatre Ticket to Fluency
Readers Theatre is not the icing on the cake, it is the cake
Lorraine Griffith, The Power of Readers Theatre
o improves not only reading but writing as well
Students can add more dialogue to books and infer what the
characters may be feeling, saying
I am the Dog, I am the Cat rewritten as I am the Student, I am
the Teacher, I am the Triangle, I am the Rectangle (incorporates
math), I am the Lizard, I am the Frog (incorporates science), etc.
o Every child in Lorraines class that year passed the state reading exam
Readers Theatre script: The Preamble of the Constitution

Phrasing
o The hallmark of a disfluent reader is a child that reads word by word. The natural unit of
reading is not the word; its the phrase. Think of the words of, if, and the. Define
them. Theres limited meaning because they are part of a larger phrase.
Recall the Fry 600 Words list and instead of teaching them as individual words,
teach them as phrases
So there you are.
By the water.
An angry cat.

All 600 word list words as phrases ALREADY DONE

FOR YOU HERE !

Synergy
o Fluency Development Lesson (FDL)
Goal: Every single day, the students can read something that they could not read at
the beginning of the lesson. This gives students a huge sense of accomplishment.
With the FDL, students observe themselves daily achieving competency and proficiency in their
reading.

Steps for the daily 20-minute Fluency Development

Lesson (FDL)
Teacher introduces a daily poem (or other text) to students by reading the text to the students
fluently, one or more times (modeled reading).
1. Students read a familiar passage from the previous lesson to the teacher or a fellow student for
accuracy and fluency.
2. The teacher introduces a new short text and reads it to the students two or three times while
the students follow along. Text can be a poem, segment from a basal passage, or literature
book, etc.
3. The teacher and students discuss the nature and content of the passage.
4. Teacher and students read the passage chorally several times. Antiphonal reading and other
variations are used to create variety and maintain engagement.

5. The teacher organizes student pairs. Each student practices the passage three times while his
or her partner listens and provides support and encouragement.
6. Individuals and groups of students perform their reading for the class or other audience.
7. The students and their teacher choose 3 or 4 words from the text to add to the word bank
and/or word wall.
8. Students engage in word study activities (e.g. word sorts with word bank words, word walls,
flash card practice, defining words, word games, etc.)
9. The students take a copy of the passage home to practice with parents and other family
members.
10. Students return to school and read the passage to the teacher or a partner who checks for
fluency and accuracy.
As you can see, in this 20 minutes of intense and deep practice, students learn to read a poem well
every day. However, not only do they see themselves as better readers, but they actually become
better readers as a result of the lesson.

Recommended resource for parents of young children, teachers in primary grades:

Fast Start for Early Readers, Grades K-2

The Garden Song

[Chorus:]
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make this garden grow.
Gonna mulch it deep and low,
Gonna make it fertile ground.
Inch by inch, row by row,
Please bless these seeds I sow.
Please keep them safe below
'Til the rain comes tumbling down.
Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones,
We are made of dreams and bones
Need spot to call my own
Cause the time is close at hand.
Grain for grain, sun and rain
I'll find my way in nature's chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music of the land.
[Chorus]
Plant your rows straight and long,
Season them with a prayer and song
Mother earth will keep you strong
If you give her love and care.
Old crow watching from a tree
Has his hungry eyes on me
In my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there.
[Chorus]