Category: Reading & Literacy

Picture walks are an activity that is completed before reading occurs. The reader views the pictures of the story and predicts what they think is occurring. This activates prior knowledge and gives reading a direction.

Book or picture walks are shared reading activities with the educator before reading new or unfamiliar text and involve the educator “walking” through the text with learners. During this time, text and graphic features are identified and discussed. Picture walks involve pointing out photographs or illustrations in a story to preview or introduce it prior to reading. Book walks involve studying the front and back covers, table of contents, a sample of pages, headings or bolded info, and illustrations in a text.

Book or picture walks spark learners’ interest and give learners a chance to begin thinking about or anticipate the story while making connections. Picture walks can help a learner connect the visual images in the story to their experiences and activate prior knowledge. This sets the purpose for reading, and learners can make predictions about what might happen in the story.

 As learners make predictions, make connections, and set purpose, comprehension of the story is increased. Students focus on the illustrations on the covers and throughout the story during a picture walk. Learners explain what they see in the pictures and often answer who, what, where, when, and why questions related to the images. Learners then predict what they think the story will be about. Learners might also read a sample of pages before making predictions.

Visual Representations

In this video to the right, an educator does a book walk with learners before reading a book about birds. For this book walk, the educator focuses on headings, table of contents, the glossary, and captions. At each of the focus points, they stop and ask learners questions or describe each part. A book walk also helps learners understand the structure of a book. In this video, learners are engaged throughout the entire process because the educator is asking questions. The questions are a type of formative assessment.

Content Area Examples

History- To adapt a picture walk to a history lesson, the educator can concentrate on dates that are bolded or that stick out. Dates are essential in history, so learners who pay attention to them might be likely to remember that important date. Focusing on dates might also let the learner predict what happens on those specific dates.

Art- Book walks can be adapted to other subjects.  When the educator starts a new unit, they might have a few books to introduce what the learners will be working on for the week.  The educator might do a book walk, talk about the title, and discuss a new skill. The educator might also go through the book and show the learners some pictures. This will let the learners have some background knowledge of what they will be creating in art class. After the educator goes through the book walk, they might have the learners read the book to know what they will be creating. 

Math- To adapt a picture walk for a math lesson, the educator can have the learners skim through a math unit and focus on vocabulary words that are bolded or concentrate on anything that may stand out.  The educator can then have the learners come together as a class and discuss the new vocabulary words and images. This would be a helpful strategy for each learner to clarify any unknown words or confusion.

Reading- A picture walk is an excellent strategy to use for a reading lesson. At the beginning of the unit, the educator might want to introduce a new book by first doing a picture walk. This allows the learners to talk about the book and make inferences about the story.  Learners can make inferences by looking at the pictures or any words that may stand out.

Automacity is the ability to look at a word and read it within one second of seeing it. Word automaticity is essential for fluency and comprehension. Fluency develops over time and through practice. At the earliest stage of reading development, learners’ oral reading is slow and labored because they learn to “break the code” – to attach sounds to letters and blend letter sounds into recognizable words.

Even when learners identify many words automatically, their oral reading may be monotone, not fluent. To read with expression, readers must be able to separate the text into meaningful chunks. Readers must know to pause appropriately within and at the ends of sentences and change emphasis and tone.

The difference between fluency and automaticity

The literacy terms automaticity and fluency often are used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.

Automaticity is the effortless word identification that comes with a great deal of reading practice. Readers may be accurate but inefficient at recognizing words in the early stages of learning to read. Continued reading practice helps word identification become more automatic, rapid, and effortless.

Automaticity refers only to accurate, speedy word identification, not to reading with expression. Therefore, automaticity (or automatic word identification) is necessary but not sufficient for fluency.

Fluency instruction

Fluency is not a stage of reading at which readers can read every word quickly and easily. It changes depending on the material that readers are reading, their familiarity with the content, and the amount of their practice with reading content. Even skilled readers may read slowly when reading texts with words or topics that are foreign. For instance, readers who are usually fluent may not be able to read technical content fluently, such as a textbook about nuclear physics.

It is essential to note that fluency instruction should be with a text that learners can read independently. It is at this level where learners can practice speed and expression rather than decoding. The chart below describes each literacy level:

Independent Level: Easy for the learner to read (95% word accuracy).

Instructional Level      : Challenging but doable for the reader (90% word accuracy).

Frustration Level: Difficult content for the learner to read (less than 90% word accuracy).

Researchers have investigated two effective instructional approaches related to fluency to help educators gain knowledge of fluency instruction. In the first strategy, repeated and monitored oral reading, learners read passages aloud several times and receive guidance from the educator. In the second approach, independent silent reading, learners are encouraged to read extensively.

Monitored and repeated oral reading

Repeated and monitored oral reading can improve reading fluency reading achievement.

Learners who read and reread passages verbally as they receive guidance and feedback become better readers. Repeated oral reading substantially improves word identification, speed, and accuracy as well as fluency. Repeated oral reading can improve reading comprehension. Repeated oral reading can also improve the reading ability of all learners throughout the elementary school years. It helps struggling readers at higher grade levels.

Many educators have relied primarily on round-robin reading to develop oral fluency. In round-robin reading, learners take turns reading parts of a text aloud. Round-robin reading in itself does not help fluency. This may be because learners only read small amounts of text, and they usually read this small portion only once.

Researchers have found several efficient strategies related to repeated oral reading:

Also, some efficient, repeated oral reading strategies have carefully designed feedback to guide the reader’s performance.

Independent reading

No research evidence confirms that teaching time spent on silent, independent reading with minimal guidance improves reading fluency and overall reading success.

One of the significant differences between good and subpar readers is the amount of time they spend reading. There is a strong correlation between reading ability and how much a learner reads. Based on this evidence, educators have long been encouraged to promote voluntary reading in the class. Teacher-education and reading-education literature often recommend in-class procedures for encouraging learners to read there.

However, research has not yet confirmed whether independent silent reading with minimal guidance or feedback improves reading achievement and fluency. Direct instruction in reading is a good predictor of reading achievement. However, learners need to be given time to apply their reading skills through silent reading with a book at their independent level.

An educator must utilize assessments such as the WCPM (Words Correct Per Minute) to plan for responsive instruction, especially among learners struggling with reading skills. Educators fail to identify the assessment results as efficient tools for diagnostic teaching. Diagnostic teaching is a sequence of activities where educators can utilize various ways of assisting learners.

First, assessment procedures are essential. Therefore, the educator must assess the learners reading ability by subjecting the learner to the WCMP program to decide their performance level and, as an initial course of action, the starting point.

The second process entails interpreting data according to the learner’s development level, for instance, by finding out if the language is first or second—this point of action assists in meeting the curriculum expectations through the teaching practices. Thirdly, there is a need to adjust the strategies and contents for giving teaching guides.

The teaching strategies have to incorporate the learners’ requirements to master or garner new advanced skills or strategies to matriculate their reading capabilities and knowledge.  A good course of action an educator should contemplate in their duties of helping a learner matriculate in their WCPM and reading accuracy includes offering support for continual reading habits.

Learners with reading challenges need a restricted number of directives for decoding words to sharpen their skills. Lastly, learners often take a while to master skills. Therefore there is a need for continual re-interpretation of the teaching guidelines over time.

Importance of the WCPM and Reading Accuracy

Engagement in the reading fluency analysis gives us a bridge between the ability to identify and comprehend content. It is a spark for leaders because it allows them to focus on the issues and thus put attention towards the need to understand the meaning of text during reading.

Non-fluent readers focus much of their attention on figuring out the words and therefore end up with another problem linked to comprehension.

The process provides an opportunity to engage guidelines for verbally repeated reading and supportive assistance from the educators’ feedback from the performance results. The assessment is class-based for monitoring learners’ progress and for both the accuracy and reading rates.

The evaluation of reading accuracy depends on the capability to make words in a manuscript. Reading accuracy is the automatic process of interpretation and integration of appropriate expressions or phrases during the reading process with minimal utilization of required resources to communicate meaning. Accuracy in decoding words is essential, but the main aim is to ensure that the words undergo automatic decoding with less effort during reading.

Interpretation entails the skill to phrase and express words appropriately during the reading process. Accurate and fluent reading is the skill to decode words in a text accurately and automatically present them; while illustrating optimal comprehension, it can also interpret text expressively. As an essential aspect of reading, fluency affects the readers’ ability to understand the text.

What are the efficient methods of determining learners’ reading fluency and efficiency? Are there methods suitable for determining reading fluency?

Reading Accuracy

Fluent readers have experience. They can decipher meaning from a text without human intervention or need for resources as a requisite for triggering the conscious mind.

The most favorable accurate literacy level focuses on finding meaning out of a text without working hard during the reading process. One does not need to listen intently to the sound of words but identifies the words automatically and accurately when seeing the text. An excellent reader rarely requires the need to focus concentration on finding the meaning from a text. This aspect differentiates the experiences of learning readers.

The accuracy in reading requires the reader to have the capacity to interpret or make sense of words in the text during the reading process. Reading accuracy allows one to concentrate attention on the comprehension process or other related assignments, finding meaning from a combination of texts. The ability to read has a direct correlation to comprehension.

The percentage of the words a reader can engage correctly within a given period decides the reading accuracy. This is an essential measure for reading proficiency since it indicates the various levels of decoding accuracy. There exists various levels of performance in the word decoding accuracy tests.

The independent level is over the 97% range. These readers can engage with text without challenges or need for assistance. The teaching level readers have a performance range of 90% to 96%. They perform under the guidance of an expert reader. The last is the ‘frustration’ level. The median scores of these readers are under the 90% mark. They experience the assessment of reading text as a challenging task that is too challenging to conceptualize.

Although it is widely utilized, especially in the informal reading inventory, the test for oral reading fluency incorporates accuracy at all achievement levels. The reader faces the challenge of meeting several words within the assessment passage to meet the requests set forth by the analysis process.

Various assessment courses of action are a good process for determining accuracy because of the in-depth analysis. Still, they consume a lot of teaching time and are thus not viable for most educators. The rate of reading decides the learner’s ability to engage in automaticity and word identification.

A better and more common process is the words read correctly per minute (WCPM). Throughout the reading process, the analysis counterchecks the wrong words and counts only the correctly read words within 60 seconds.

Procedure for Measuring the Reading Accuracy Utilizing the WCPM (Words Correct Per Minute)

The initial step involves identifying appropriate text with an approximate number of words depending on the learner’s grade level. The readability formula or rubric decides the appropriateness of a text to a given level of study. The learner should read the passage aloud for one minute under a tape-recording process. Appropriate reading should be at normal reading speed without the tendency of hurrying to finish on time.

The educator has to assist in words that the learner fails to respond within a two to three-second interval to ensure the process engagement within the specified one-minute period. The educator analysis process entails checking for mispronunciation errors, bearing in mind the assisted word pronunciation. Other errors include replacing the original text to evade challenges, total oversight of tough words, and reversing of pronunciation.

The administrator has to mark the point reached after a one-minute analysis. An analyst eventually converts the scores to a percentage and compares them against the performance range’s target norms.

Benefits of WCPM Analysis

The process of WCPM (Words Correct Per Minute) is beneficial because several sessions can be performed utilizing different content in comparison of the median score versus the performance standard, which allows us to determine the learner’s actual ability.

The educator can repeat the process within a short while for a broad range of learners in need of improvement, thus determining the reading growth pattern. Relating the readers to the target norms enhances automaticity among them, channeled via relating performance to the standardized measurements for accurate reading.

By measuring the learner’s reading accuracy, the educators can decide the main sources of challenges. Some readers have low accuracy in reading and therefore automatically end with overall low scores. Simultaneously, others have high scores but suffer from decoding errors and have low scores.

The accuracy assessment helps differentiate between these two types of readers to make them better readers. The analysis decides the comprehension challenges, but eventually, reading growth depends on the type of challenges the learner experiences.

Predicting is an essential reading strategy. It allows learners to utilize info from the text to anticipate what will happen in the story. When making predictions, learners envision what will come next in the text, based on their prior knowledge. Predicting encourages kids to think ahead and ask questions actively. It also allows learners to understand the story better, connect to what they are reading, and interact with the text.

Making predictions is also a useful strategy to improve reading comprehension. Learners can make predictions about a story based on what they have already heard, read, or seen. This, in turn, will allow learners to become actively involved in the reading process. To decide if their predictions are correct, learners should be required to reread portions of the text to remember facts about the story’s characters or events.

Picture walks can operate as a tool to organize info within a story, expanding a kid’s comprehension. During a picture walk, learners can activate their prior knowledge and connect the story’s visual images to their individual experiences.

Learners can also utilize a graphic organizer to predict the outcome of a story. Learners can do this by identifying clues within the text to predict how characters might behave and how the story’s problems will be solved. When using a graphic organizer, learners can stay engaged in the story as they logically capture their thoughts. Educators need to encourage kids to record clues that either support or deny their predictions. Teachers can also allow learners to revise their predictions to reflect on the clues that are found within the text.

Making predictions encourages readers to utilize critical thinking and problem-solving skills.  Readers are given a chance to reflect and assess the text, thus extracting deeper meaning and comprehension skills. Learners will also be interested in the reading content when they connect their prior knowledge with the new info being learned.

Content Area Examples

Reading

There are several activities that educators can incorporate within their class, allowing learners to make predictions effectively. To introduce this reading strategy, educators can hand out photographs from either a newspaper or a magazine. Learners will then predict with the evidence from the picture, their prior knowledge, or examples from their experiences.

Teachers can also create a prediction pail. When introducing a new story, learners first take a picture walk and then make a prediction based on the title, illustrations, and diagrams. This allows learners to utilize clues and evidence from the text to make accurate predictions. The kids then write their predictions on a slip of paper and put them in the pail. Next, learners read the story within their small reading groups. After the story is completed, they can share their predictions and connect to the other shared responses.

Math

Learners can make predictions based on patterns. When looking at a problem or example, learners will recognize distinct designs/outlines through repetition and observation. From this info, learners will be able to predict the data they collected to confirm their answers as they justify their reasoning.

Science

Predicting can be used in science when learners experiment. For example, learners may be studying a unit on plants and predict what might happen to a plant’s growth if the amount of water rises. Based on their observations, learners will predict what might happen next as they collect data and support their answers with evidence.