Reading Aloud Builds Fluency

Young readers (K-3) often stumble from word to word as they read. They do this because they are just figuring out how to decode words. As their reading progresses young readers should start to gain fluency. This can happen with school instruction, but with large classes of students at different reading levels it is difficult for teachers to work on fluency. Parents need to take an active role in helping students develop reading fluency.

What is fluency?
Fluency is the ability to read a text quickly and accurately. A person who reads a text fluently does not pause to decode the words, but moves along at a steady pace. Fluency depends on the level of the reader in relation to the level of the text. For example, high school graduates should be able to read the newspaper quickly and accurately, but might struggle when reading scientific or academic texts. In other words, they are fluent in reading the newspaper, but not fluent in reading more difficult texts.

Why is fluency important?
Fluency is important because it frees readers from the decoding process and allows them to focus on comprehension. Fluency is separate from comprehension. A fluent reader might be able to read a text accurately, but might not understand the text. A high school graduate might be able to read an academic or scientific text fluently, but might struggle at comprehending what it means. Being able to read a text fluently is the first step toward comprehension. If you can read a text fluently, you can put your energy into understanding the meaning. If you have to struggle with both decoding the words and understanding the text at the same time, reading will be quite difficult. This happens with many adult second language learners, who have the fluency of a young reader, yet desire to read texts with adult complexities. Their fluency level makes reading complex text a time consuming process.

How do we build fluency in young readers?
The National Institute of Literacy recommends that students read text aloud to develop fluency. They offer three important considerations when having students read texts aloud.

1. Find an appropriate book-- Students should read a variety of texts, including fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The texts should be at the reader's level, meaning the student can read the text with a 95% accuracy.
   
2. Model the text for the child-- Students need fluent models to emulate. Students need to understand proper pronunciation, proper use of pauses, proper pacing and proper inflection. Occasional explanation of pauses or inflection can help children understand why the text is being read the way it is.
   
3. Have the child read the text aloud several times-- Children often have to read a text aloud several times to get it right. Reading a text several times gives them the opportunity to focus on the way they are saying it.

What kind of text do you like to read aloud?
I like to read poetry aloud. Reading the newspaper or a novel aloud just isn't much fun. Children feel the same way. The National Institute for Literacy recommends that teachers use poetry for fluency practice.

"Poetry is especially well suited to fluency practice because poems for children are often short and they contain rhythm, rhyme, and meaning, making practice easy, fun, and rewarding."

Children like to read poetry and the rhythm of poetry helps them to read poems more fluently. My son is particularly fond of Jack Prelutsky. I have made attempts at introducing William Carlos Williams, with only mild success. The poetry you offer your child does not have to be of literary value, as long as your child is reading and working on reading the poems fluently.

More on Reading at The National Institute of Literacy
Ideas for this blog came from reading a pamphlet, "Put Reading First:The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read", published by The National Institute for Literacy. The pamphlet summarizes research about young readers. It provides an overview of pertinent research on the five areas of reading instruction; phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension. It is designed for teachers, but is helpful for concerned parents.

Children Suprise You and They Read Poetry

Kyle Writes a Poetry Book Review
Kyle wrote a poetry book review for his most recent blog. He did this without any guidance from me. He was responsible for posting on the weekend and knew he had to do it before he could play with his friend. In order to get the post done, he woke up early, about 6:30, Saturday morning and got to work on the post. He completed most of the post before I got out of bed. We had spoken about book reviews as a blogging option, but I did not provide him with models or guidance. So, he was completely on his own. He choose to do a book review and he choose a poetry book. I was surprised by his choices, but quite pleased.

Organic Nature of the Language Lesson
Many of the post Kyle does are not thoroughly planned out. From a teaching standpoint, I prefer to let the lesson unfold as a post progresses. The poetry post is a good example of the organic nature of the lessons. I usually find teaching points in what he writes. In this post a lesson evolved from his use of the word hear. After reading his post, I pointed out to Kyle that he wrote "Do you want to hear one?", instead of "Do you want to read one?" Kyle typed out the poem with no intention of adding audio to the post. I then asked him if he wanted to change the word hear to read or if he wanted to record himself reading the poem. He chose to record himself. This required him to practice reading the poem. I took this opportunity to teach him about the rhythm of the poetic line, pauses at the end of lines and changing the tone of his voice when reading. He enjoyed reading the poem. He practiced until he was able to read it straight through without mistakes or long pauses. He gained a new respect for poetry by having to perform the poem himself. This could have been difficult to force upon him with a lesson. But, since the post was his idea and he wrote hear, the recording and the practice seemed a natural progression to him.

A Poetry Book that Encourages Vocabulary Acquisition
The Dragons are Singing Tonight by Jack Prelutsky is poetry book written for young boys. The poems are fantastical and are all about dragons. The poetry is rhythmical and reads very well, but the poems are not simple. They are complex grammatically and use challenging vocabulary. As an educator, I really value texts that my child is interested in and that challenge his language ability. This book does just that. That said, the gist of the poetry is still attainable without understanding the challenging vocabulary words. We have been reading this book since Kyle was five. He didn't understand all that was being read to him, but he still loved the book. Now that he is older, he can read the poems himself and is interested in knowing exactly what they mean. He uses his dictionary and/or comes to me for explanations. In this poem amiable, fret and tremble required the dictionary.

The Sound File Converted to a Movie
We used Audacity to record Kyle's reading of the poem. Audacity is a simple to use freeware program. After recording the poem, we converted the audio file into a video file with Windows Movie Maker. We did this because Blogger does not accept audio uploads. It is simpler to upload a video to the site than to get an account elsewhere to host the audio. The picture from the book was available at Amazon.com.

Personalizing Online Videos is Fun

Website Recommendation
Now that Christmas is approaching, e-cards are abundant. One of the best sites for video e-cards is JibJab. JibJab allows you to add your face to videos in order to personalize the experience. You simply upload a picture that includes a good head shot. JibJab provides tools to clip the face from the background. The tools are easy enough for a child to use. Once the faces are available you can use them in a number of cards. You will be required to signup to the site and not all cards are free, but the signup requires simply an email address and a password and there are enough free videos for the kids to enjoy the site. We started by Elfing Ourselves. The kids loved this. We did it last year as well, but the videos are getting better as the technology improves. After we elfed ourselves, Kyle explored the site and found a High School Musical video that he could add his face to. We all laughed out loud at the results. After the kids were done, I made the following image.

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Warnings
The videos are designed to be humorous, so not all are appropriate for children. Also, the videos might not be available forever. Last year, the Elf videos stopped being available after Christmas. We can no longer view the videos we made last year. If you really like your video, you can buy it for $4.95. I prefer to emphasize the process over the product and to save the money.

The Writing
I made Kyle write about his video. I decided to have him focus on the process of making the video. We talked about different ways to approach it, either a series of simple sentences or one complex sentence. It worked better for him to write it more concisely in a complex sentence.

Security and Privacy

I started looking for blogs by other children around Kyle's age. I found very few and mostly ran across blogs talking about the safety of children blogging. Most sites give some safety rules for parents to follow when children blog. The basic rules are:

1. Never offer personal information.
   
2. Use sites you can password protect.
3. Screen content and monitor the blog.
   
4. Work on the blog with your children.
   

Have I followed these rules? No I haven't followed the first two rules, but I have followed the second two.

1. Kyle's name, first and last, is used on the site. I don't see this as a problem. Maybe, because we tend to live in a protected environments overseas. Will I feel the same when we live in America? I hope so. I think the value of using his name gives him a strong sense of identity and confidence. I don't like the secrecy of some code name. What do we teach our children when we ask them to use a code name or to hide their identity? Once, we convince them that acting in secrecy and having a different identity is expected on the Internet how far will they take it?
   
2. Kyle's site is open to all who want to read it. Frankly, this is part of his motivation for writing. He loves to look at the map and see people from around the world are accessing his blog. He would see less motivation for writing and writing well, if he thought it was just for family and friends. The fact that so many young bloggers (under 10) seem to be hidden away somewhere, doesn't allow Kyle to look at other children's blogs. This is sad, because it cuts of the social aspect of blogging.
3. I screen and monitor everything that goes on the blog. All comments come through my email. Basically, no one can communicate with Kyle on the Internet, but through me. All of his blog entries are planned and are essentially writing lessons. This is different from some other blogs, but there is still a lot of personal content. The fact that I screen and monitor the blog allows me to break rules 1 & 2.
4. I work on the blog with Kyle. I talk to him about it and plan it with him. Will this work as he gets older? Will he want to have a more secretive web space? I hope not and I hope that the lessons set forth now will prepare him for honest and open relationships in the real and the virtual world.

I understand that there are predators out there, but I still believe in the overall goodness of human nature. I don't want to keep my children from the world and the world from them, because I am scared of a few people. This view might be idealistic, but I see greater risk in teaching children to get comfortable with secrecy and to write in generalities. Personal identity and personal pride are characteristics that are worth encouraging in young children.

About. com: Should you let your children blog?
Microsoft Security: 12 safety tips on blogging for parents and kids

Blogs in Plain English

This is an easy to understand video that could be used to introduce children to the idea of blogging. This video comes from Common Craft, a company that makes "complex ideas easy to understand using short and simple videos." The videos use simple pictures and plain English which could be used as a model for children to create their own videos. The process relies on putting together a number of still images and is time consuming, but the results are great. To see how they do it take a look at this page which shows how they made an election video.

Thanksgiving Lesson

Kyle wrote a blog about Thanksgiving. I set forth three teaching points for the blog: to progress from general to specific, to use a colon for a series, and to understand the difference a past and present tense in a paragraph. I also ended up teaching him how to use time transitions. We started with three questions

1. What is Thanksgiving?
   
2. What did we do for Thanksgiving this year? What did we eat?
   
3. What are you thankful for?

Past and Present
Questions 1 and 3 require him to use present tense, while question 2 requires him to use past tense. He wrote the paragraph in the proper tense without any further guidance. I just pointed out after he wrote the entry the uses of the two tenses.

Colons
The entry required him to list things. I showed him how to use a colon with a series. He writes like he talks, so he originally wrote: We had three pies, cherry, sweet potato, and lemon. I showed him how to use a colon in place of the initial coma. I likes learning new things and wanted to incorporate the colon for his list of things he is thankful for.

General to Specific
The questions guide him to a general to specific construction. He started with a general statement about Thanksgiving. Then, he described what we as a family do for Thanksgiving. This was exactly what I wanted him to do and he did it with no guidance. Then, he jumped to "I ate.." This was not what I wanted. I guided him with questions about the whole group: What did we eat? He did not want to write everything we ate, so he came up with "a lot of food." This was perfect and allowed him to transition from the general (we/food) to the specific (I/turkey).

Time Transitions
I used this as a time to teach him time transitions. I guided him to the transitions with when questions like: When was Thanksgiving? He used responses (yesterday, after we ate) to progress through the paragraph.

Technology
Then came the fun part. We did not take pictures for Thanksgiving, so we had to improvise. We searched Google Images for a "thanksgiving dinner." He choose an image and we went about the task of personalizing it. We used Adobe Fireworks (Paint.net is a freeware version) to edit the image. First, we had to find a picture with a close up of Kyle's face. Next, we had to cut out his face by removing the background. Then, we had to merge the images. These steps required my help. Once his head was on the image, Kyle could make adjustments to the new merged image. He used the select tool and paint bucket to change the color of the clothes and to change the peas into cranberries.

This project took longer than expected, but in the end we was satisfied. I rewarded him by buying him his own domain name: www.kylegonzales.com.

Presidential Election

Political Choices
Kyle wrote a blog about the recent presidential election, Obama vs. McCain. He has been following the election since the primaries. Kyle has held preferences for who he wanted to win the election throughout the primaries. He was naturally more attracted to the Democratic primary, because it was a close race. He initially wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Why? I can only speculate. I am rather objective and try to impart that on him, so I don't give him many indications to my preferences. His preference for Hillary might have something to do with her being a woman and his wanting to see an American female president. He knows the Philippines has a female president and asked why America has not had one. He is also familiar with the Clinton name, from President Bill Clinton. Once, Hillary lost he switched allegiance to Obama. Why? Again, I am not sure. It could be the familiarity with him from the primary. It could be that he identified with him better. Maybe because of his age or his mixed heritage. I am not sure, but do know that he never really said much about McCain and never chose him when playing video games on miniclip.com (see below). Hillary or Barrack were his choices.

Guiding Kyle's Writing
In his blog, Kyle mentioned that he would help the environment if he were president. This is something he came up with on his own and must be a result of the push for environmental issues at his school and in the U.A.E. as a whole. I guided him in writing his blog by asking him 3 very general questions:

1. What happened?
2. What is his job?
3. What do you think?

I also gave him a list of useful words.

1. election
2. vote
3. president
4. Barrack Obama
5. John McCain
6. African-American
7. Asian-American

He chose not to use all of the words. I added the term Asian-American, because he had mentioned that he could be the first Asian-American president. He chose not to write about that.

Election Video Games
He has played a few election-based games on Miniclip.com, which he found enjoyable and educational. The game linked below, McCain vs. Obama, was perhaps the most educational of the bunch. It allows you to choose a candidate and make moves with the purpose of acquiring states. It allowed him to see that the election is a strategic game and to better understand Americas electoral college. Beware, other games on the site are more confrontational.

McCain Vs Obama Risk it all and use superior tactics to win the Presidential Election

Play this free game now!!

Del's Video Blog

Delbert now has a blog, Del Reports. He is 5 years old and cannot write sentences yet, but he can talk. I have decided to have him do a video blog, until he can write. Kyle's blog has become more video orientated, but I now require him to write about the videos.

What do you need to make web videos and post them to blogger?

• RCA EZ205 Small Wonder Digital Camcorder : This very small camera is useful and simple to use. The kids can operate it themselves and you don't have to worry about external media, like tapes or DVDs.
• Windows Movie Maker: Useful for editing a video or putting clips together.
  
• Moyea Flash Video MX (or the free version, Moyea Video4Web Convertor): Converting the video to flash allows easier viewing within the website.
  
• Space on the Internet: As of now you can not store the videos on blogger, so I put them on another server and link to them. Google and YouTube accounts are free, and allow you to upload and store flash files.

These are the steps we follow.

1. We shoot the video.
2. We plug the camera into the usb port and copy the video onto the computer.
3. We check the video to see if we want to trim it or edit something out of it.
4. If we need to edit the video, we open it in windows movie maker.
5. Once we are happy with the video, we convert it to flash with the Moyea program. The video is originally saved as an avi file, but flash is more web friendly.
   
6. The program produces an html file and a .swf file. We load the .swf file on the server.
7. We open the html file, change the location of the .swf file (since we moved it to a different location), and then we copy all of the code in the html file.
8. We Create a new post on blogger.
   
9. We paste the code we copied from the html file into the new post.
10. We write something below the code.
    
11. We publish the post.
    

Summer Vacation

Kyle has had a busy summer. He has done enough to give him content for his blog. We traveled to Louisiana for the summer, stopping in Washington D.C. for a short vacation on the way. In D.C. we were able to see most of the major sights. Kyle posted a short summary of our trip. With the post I asked him to write in organized paragraphs. This added extra stress to the task. Although he was happy with the results of the post, the time it took to complete it has soured him on writing. For his next post I will use video to get him motivated again.

While we were in Louisiana for two months Kyle managed just a single post on his stay there. There were many first for him in Louisiana (his first baseball game, his first time riding a tube), but he hasn't shown a desire to want to write about these activities. We did start a video on the weather, or the rain, in Louisiana. We will finish it here in the U.A.E., in order to contrast the wet conditions of Louisiana to the dry conditions of the U.A.E.

Kyle has started school again, which cuts down on the time he has to blog. But the hope is that in school he gains new motivation to blog. The desire to share his experiences with classmates can give him the motivation to do the extra work the blog requires. I will also be on the lookout for school projects that can be done online.

Hatta Trip

We drove through Oman again and went to Hatta, which is in the U.A.E., but is accessed by going through Oman. We have to bring our passports and go through the border crossing. Prior to 2007 it was an open border, but they are making efforts to tighten up the borders.

We started with the intent of finding desert animals. We did see a number of animals, goats, camels, a donkey, a lizard and some bugs. We made several stops in the mountains to examine the different types of rocks and rock formations there. We took a number of pictures and Kyle could blog on a number of features of the geology of the area.

For now I had him do a post on natural resources. He just learned about the way we use natural resources in school. He uses the Harcourt series for Grade 2 and they are on the Earth Science chapter. The trip was a good opportunity to bring the text to life. I had Kyle look at how natural resources were used in buildings and walls. Most things here are made from concrete, but we saw some nice walls that were made from the rocks found in the area. We also got lucky and spotted a concrete block making "factory." It was a small company and they let us walk around to see how the blocks are made. They didn't speak English so I had to figure out the process myself, which was not difficult to deduce given the materials (the cement, rocks, water, sand and ash) were in plain sight and the machines were simple molds and mixers.


Kyle did the post (Natural Resources) two days after the trip. He worked on it by himself. Once he was finished, I had him read it aloud a few times. While reading he caught several mistakes with missing articles, capitalization and word spacing. I helped him with one mistake that he has made before. He misspells "from" as "form." The spell checker doesn't underline it and he reads right through it.

Other possible post from this trip: Desert Animals and Erosion.

We have two things to do this week. We will see Ambassador Satch, a musical portrait of Louis Armstrong, at UAE University and we will go to the Al Ain Zoo. The Al Ain Zoo has 3 new white rhinos. The children are really excited to see them, so I will take them after school one day this week.

Motivation to Post

I have gotten Kyle to make a few more post. I am giving him more freedom and more structure at the same time. For his most recent post (Al Ain Air Show), I set up a template that fits three to four pictures. I allow him to choose what he wants to write about and what pictures should be included. This might make for an illogical (in my mind) sequence at times, but giving him the choice motivates him more. We have done enough and have enough pictures for him to find something he wants to talk about and share. The structure of the pictures and the template gives him a clear goal, while choosing his own content helps to motivate him. So far I have been able to keep the content contained to "educational" topics, but I am sure the day is coming when he is going to ask to write about High School Musical or the latest pop craze. So far so good. I did promise him I would get him his own url if he continues to blog. This is another carrot, since he likes the idea of telling his friends about his website.

Time to Blog

We have had many opportunities for Kyle to write in his blog, but getting him to spend the time to write takes some subtle motivation. The geology post didn't make it to the blog. He enjoys writing about things that he does, like Sports Day, or topics related to what he is doing in school, like this pollution project. He recognizes the audience for these types of posts. He wants his teacher to see his projects, while he wants his friends to see what he has been doing.

We went to Bahrain this past weekend with the Al Ain Rugby Club, which gave us plenty of material for posts. I started by having him do a trip report. This report asks him to answer basic questions about his trip. I want him to answer in complete sentences, but he prefers answering in phrases. My requiring him to write complete answers means it takes him longer to finish a blog and makes it that much more of a task. I am trying to balance fun and production. The goal is for him to enjoy writing and to see life as a learning experience.

I hope to use the Bahrain trip to get him to do research on Bahrain, but based on his answers to the trip questions it seems like his interest in Bahrain revolves around rugby. We did see an amazing fort, Bahrain Fort, that is on land that has been inhabited since 2300 B.C. I hope that I can get him to write about our visit there, a country profile for geography would be a nice start. At least I would like him to narrate the video we recorded, although this requires more time on my part. We can easily find time for exploring, but struggle to make time for the reporting. In January we did numerous things worth reporting on: we went to the Philippines; he played in a rugby tournament; and we went to the Al Ain Air Show.