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Amanda Hartman
Thank you for being here. Welcome to Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. This podcast is for families and caregivers to support the literacy learning that goes on outside of school. We welcome all of you to join us to make learning fun and purposeful. We know that literacy learning is a life thing and not just a school thing. As family members and caregivers, we know your role is central to your kids literacy development.
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Amanda Hartman
You may have young children, kids, pre-teens, or young adults. We have recommendations to support their literacy journey. Let's get started. I'm Amanda Hartman.
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Emily Smith
I'm Kristi Guinness, and I'm Emily Smith. We are staff developers at Advancing Literacy at Teachers College in New York City. We're a center within the Teacher Education and Community Partnerships Division, providing professional development for school districts in the New York City metro area, across the country and worldwide. This school year, we will offer over 20 free workshops for families, caregivers, and educators, and you can find our events in future workshops on our social media pages at Tse lit and our website.
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Emily Smith
AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu. We are delighted to have Kristi Guinness part of our team at Advancing Literacy with us for this episode. Welcome, Kristi. Thanks. Happy to be here. So we usually begin by discussing our title and any relevant definitions. So could you get us started with this?
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Kristi Guinness
Sure. Today we’ll be talking about fluency. I thought we could start with a metaphor from Doctor Tim, who does a ton of research and fluency to ground us in this idea. So if you picture a bridge on one side of that bridge is a child's ability to decode, which is how they sound out or break apart words. And on the other side of the bridge is comprehension. Do they understand what they are reading? The bridge connects them is fluency. So across this episode we'll talk more about fluency. But I thought first we could start to talk about personal stories or memories that we have about fluency that stand out to you as a parent or a caregiver, or even from your own reading experience that's relevant to fluency.
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Amanda Hartman
For sure. I have lots of memories of reading at school, and I remember pretty vividly being in small groups where we did round robin reading, where each person would read aloud a sentence or a part of the book, and maybe the group had six children in the group, and we all knew in our part was coming. And I moved to that page and would practice it again and again and again and again and again in my head, because I wanted it to come out perfect.
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Amanda Hartman
I wanted to come out fluently, so I have no idea what the other parts were about. I wasn't paying attention to other parts of the text, but I was really concerned with how I was going to sound out loud.
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Emily Smith
Yeah.
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Emily Smith
That's interesting. The performance of it like I have to read and perform.
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Emily Smith
And.
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Emily Smith
Thank you, Christie. I think that bridge metaphor is really helpful for us to start with. So memories.
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Emily Smith
I have.
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Emily Smith
A really fond memory that comes to mind about my niece, who's 22 now, but I remember when she was an early reader, probably around first grade, and I think she was reading a sort of early chapter book like Poppleton, like by Cynthia Rylant. She was working at the reading part of it, and I suggested that one of the things she could do in order to reread it was to sing it, and she thought that was hysterical, and then proceeded to, like, belt out this book where it was obviously not a song, but she was reading it like putting a tune to it and dramatic, and we just burst out laughing.
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Emily Smith
It comes to mind because I think it can be joyful to perform books and to. And even if they're not meant to be performed in that way, it was just sort of a way to to have a reason to reread and to put it to song made it more fluent, which was fun for her.
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Kristi Guinness
Yeah. That's so fun.
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Emily Smith
Yeah. And what about for you? What have you got?
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Kristi Guinness
Thank you.
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Emily Smith
What comes to mind for you?
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Kristi Guinness
Yeah. I have two young children at home and my two year old. He loves to reread the same book over and over and over at bedtime. So once we've read a book a bunch of times, he can often, like, recite the words, right? So he's not looking at print. He's not, quote unquote reading words, but he remembered the words that go with the pictures, and he's able to reread the story, and he really loves to change his voice on funny parts.
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Kristi Guinness
And I noticed that he'll go, like, fast in a certain part or slow in a certain part. So he's kind of copying my fluency, which is fun to see, even with the child who's not yet decoding that, they can still have fluency.
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Emily Smith
Yeah, he's learning from you and your reading. Amazing.
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Amanda Hartman
So important. Like when we read out loud to children that model because they pick it up everywhere.
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Kristi Guinness
There's so many things they're learning when we're reading aloud to them. Yeah, absolutely.
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Emily Smith
Okay, so once we unpack the title, the next thing we tend to do is take a few minutes to think about some research. And for this, I think it might be helpful for us to get into some of the myths that exist about fluency and get ourselves on the same page, so to speak. So I'll start with myth number one.
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Emily Smith
I think that many people believe that if a student reads quickly, then they're a fluent reader. So, Kristi could you help us unpack this a bit?
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Kristi Guinness
Yeah, I think it's helpful to think of fluency not as a race to the finish line, but the ability to read with enough ease that the brain can actually focus on the meaning of the words, rather than trying to figure out what the word is. So to answer your question, Emily, there's three parts of fluency that we can break apart.
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Kristi Guinness
So the first is accuracy. And that is simply getting the words right, which is of course really important in reading. The second is automaticity, which is a fancy word for pace. And it's not about reading super fast, but reading effortlessly. So if you think about a long distance runner. They have a really strong pace. They aren't sprinting, but they also aren't encountering many hurdles.
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Kristi Guinness
Their pace is just right. And the same is true when you're reading. The last part of fluency is prosody, which means reading with expression, and that is like pausing. If there is a period, or raising your voice when there's a question mark, or changing your voice when a character is really excited or matching your voice to the mood of the story.
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Kristi Guinness
And when those three things come together accuracy, pace and expression, that bridge is really strong. So yeah, I think about for parents and caregivers, when we think about supporting our kids with fluency, one habit you could create is rereading. Rereading is a really powerful, research supported way to improve fluency. So when a child reads a book for the first time, they might have to work really hard to decode a bunch of words which can make their pace of reading slower.
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Kristi Guinness
And then the second time they read, they might not have to work as hard to figure out so many words, so their pace can be a bit quicker and they can understand the text even more because the words weren't so hard.
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Emily Smith
And they might be more accurate. Also, if they self-correct it, or if you help them and help them look again at words and correct. Yeah, yeah.
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Amanda Hartman
I mean, I think this piece of research from Doctor Tim Rasinski is really important to ground these practices. And so that's really helpful.
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Kristi Guinness
Okay. So there's another myth that fluency practice is only important for younger kids. Amanda could you talk about that one?
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Amanda Hartman
Sure. I'd love to mean certainly beginning readers who are mostly in our primary grades are working and building more and more fluency in their reading and also upper grade and middle schoolers as well. So there's also research about how important it is to work on and develop fluency, even as you're older and encountering more and more complex text.
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Amanda Hartman
So David Page and some of his colleagues out of Northern Illinois University did some research around this that really looks at maybe not so much at the decoding aspect of reading, but what you were talking about, the phrasing, the expression we call that as a fancy word. Prosody in reading is really important. So even kids who are older and more sophisticated readers still can work on that idea of repeated reading or reading in pairs together, or even bringing more drama to their reading that helps to improve their fluency.
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Kristi Guinness
Thank you for saying that. It's helpful to remember that fluency isn't something that you learn and and don't need to work on anymore, that it changes if the book gets harder. If you're reading something you don't know a lot about that you might have to still really work hard at your fluency.
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Emily Smith
And I think part of that we might think about even the role of fluency in public speaking and your ability to feel comfortable reading text aloud or just having that, that sort of confidence. And for our kids who are certainly by, you know, adolescents and young adulthood are reading independently, in most instances, they still have lots of circumstances in which they could benefit for from some fluency practice.
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Emily Smith
I'm thinking, even just for a minute, about my dissertation defense. And when I was getting ready for it, I was rehearsing like, how am I going to sound when I read this part of it? Or talk about this? And that sort of rehearsal is something that people, professionals are doing all the time. Sure. Yeah, sure.
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Amanda Hartman
Like for speeches and things like.
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Emily Smith
Speeches, whatever it might be. Okay, great.
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Amanda Hartman
So, Emily, what about let's take on a third myth to work on debunking. Some people say fluency and comprehension are different skills developed separately. Fluency comes first and comprehension comes next. What do you say about that?
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Emily Smith
I say no, no. In fact, it's really helpful for us as as teachers, but also certainly for families and caregivers who are supporting kids development to understand that fluency and comprehension can develop simultaneously. And I think you'll see on our slide LaBarge and Samuel's research on this topic. But I think it's important for us to imagine that we may have a situation in which you might hear a student reading and their reading is less fluent, and you might say, let's talk about that part of that text, or let's talk about the book that we're reading, and then have them reread.
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Emily Smith
You'll understand the text a bit more, and then to go back and reread, and the reading can become much more fluent that these things again, that metaphor of a bridge is an important one, that they're very much related, and treating them as distinct from each other is not helpful. So that we can we can expect that simultaneous development.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because when kids are reading and they don't really reflect so much about what the text is showing or it's not in their voice, even just by prompting them a little bit to say, hey, wait, what's going on here? Or how's the character feeling? And then they're like, oh, she's really mad, or I'm not sure.
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Amanda Hartman
Let me go back and reread this and and think about it. They will change their voice and reflect that that meaning. Or, you know, just with that thought in their head can help aid more like expression. Or when they're reading, they read it with expression and then you say, oh, wait, so what do we now know about what's happening here?
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Amanda Hartman
And they're like, oh yeah, I do know that because I just read it in a certain way, right?
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Emily Smith
Or the expression might be off. I think as.
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Amanda Hartman
Good point.
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Emily Smith
As a parent reading aloud to my kids, there have always been times when I'm like, wait a minute, I have to reread that part. I misread it based on the scene. I didn't, you know, it was a cold read. I hadn't read it before. So sure, I didn't know that the character was actually whispering and I was instead in a full voice, I so I might say, let me reread that part and fix it up so it sounds the way it's supposed to.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah. And we want kids to know that that's not like bad to do.
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Kristi Guinness
It feels important to model for kids that we can go back and we can fix up our reading. I think it's also easy to go on autopilot, too, as a reader sometimes. Right. You kind of just like you get sucked into a book you really like, and you're reading and you're reading, but you also can start to like, zone out a little bit or lose track of what's happening.
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Kristi Guinness
So fluency, if you're reading out loud, can sometimes be that like Hazy Wintu to like what's happening for your kid. And like, if they're reading sounds a little maybe like flat, it could be let's just like think about really what's happening here. It's like reactivating for your kid.
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Emily Smith
I would imagine any tired parent or caregiver has memories of being on autopilot as a reader. When reading to kids, I think that idea of presence, if the comprehension is about having a real presence in connection to the text as you're reading it.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah, that's a great point. It makes me think also about like our most beginning kids in reading might be reading word by word, particularly on a first read, and then on a second read maybe they scoop up a little bit more like 2 or 3 word phrases. So just that expectation for a beginning reader compared to an advanced reader is important.
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Amanda Hartman
Like there's still work for both groups.
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Emily Smith
Absolutely.
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Emily Smith
Okay.
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Emily Smith
Well, I think this has given us some, you know, some myths and facts versus in terms of research. And usually the next thing we do is talk about some suggestions. We've had some along the way, but I think we can add to the list. And Kristy, what are some things you're thinking about in terms of suggestions or recommendations for caregivers and families in providing support with fluency?
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Kristi Guinness
I think to follow up with what Amanda just said, like for young readers, there's a lot that they're juggling. It's hard work. So the first time they read, they really are just figuring out the words, reading it word by word, trying to then maybe read 2 or 3 words at a time. So I think it's important with our younger readers, our five, six, seven year olds, to also pay attention to the punctuation on the page.
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Kristi Guinness
And it's not just about the words, which there is a heavy emphasis on and there needs to be. But we also want to consider changing our voice when there is a question mark or when a character is talking with dialog. Emily, you gave the example of, oh, I didn't know she was whispering there. Right? So sometimes you need to read it and then realize what's happening with the character and go back.
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Kristi Guinness
So I think having an emphasis on that expression piece and really holding on to that when working with our kids feels equally as important as making sure they're being accurate and getting the words correct and rereading is a great thing to do to support that.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah, it's so important. I mean, I just think of all the kids who I see ignore the punctuation on the page, and they just try to read it as fast as they can. And it's a race, right? Exactly. And punctuations, they're just slow us down. And to get us to pause and to think.
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Kristi Guinness
And we can say to our kids that those marks are from the author to tell us how to read it. So use those clues to help you.
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Emily Smith
Right, and to practice. Like the question mark your voice is going to raise up at the end of that of the sentence of the question or an exclamation. Absolutely.
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Kristi Guinness
Amanda, what are some fun ways that you like to think about practicing fluency with kids?
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Amanda Hartman
Well, there's so much work around drama that I know we kind of hinted towards that idea earlier, of just thinking about rereading text to bring a more dramatic voice to your reading. And I think one thing that you could do as a caregiver or as a parent is you could share the book and you could play different roles inside that book together, take on different parts, and kind of act it out.
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Amanda Hartman
That could be kind of fun to do, or to choose a scene like a good part of the book, to act out and take on some, some roles together. A second thing that I'm always reminded by Doctor Tim the power of music. And Emily, you talked about this earlier of singing a text and song and music he says, is so important to that bridge to develop fluency.
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Amanda Hartman
So maybe you all are part of a chorus or a choir, or you have some great special occasions to sing songs together, take out lyrics and have them next to you to read and sing along. Maybe it's while you're commuting or it's a special event with your family.
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Kristi Guinness
That's such a great reminder that reading isn't just books. There's literacy everywhere.
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Emily Smith
And so many of our favorite musicians. It's also about their phrasing, their decisions, and then the rhythm and the music brings it together.
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Emily Smith
Sort of.
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Amanda Hartman
Absolutely. And so it gives them great practice, but also some joy.
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Emily Smith
Absolutely. Okay. So I think we're in the next area where we start to recommend some books, right. Hopefully those suggestions are helpful to all of you. And what's new in children's literature and picture books. Christy, you want to start us off?
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Kristi Guinness
Sure. Yeah, I have two one is fiction and one is nonfiction. So I have Hello Tobi! by Andrea Cáceres, and she is a Venezuelan author and illustrator. So I also love when the author and illustrator is the same person. That's fine. She lives in New York City, and it's a beautiful picture book for young children about a family going to their neighborhood park.
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Kristi Guinness
And they see families of all sorts that are similar and different than theirs and really embracing your community. So it's a lovely picture book for kids.
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Emily Smith
It sounds like a great one to reread, and that would be like a bedtime favorite that you could imagine. Yeah, lots of rereading and fluency could happen there.
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Kristi Guinness
Definitely. The next one is The Ultimate Book of Water, which is a nonfiction big book. So like I was like 18in big. So it's really fun to put on the floor and to kind of play with. And it's by Anne-Sophie Baumann and it's actually a series. So there's lots of them. There's Ultimate Book of Cities and Construction and Space, and it's really great for both toddlers and young elementary ages to read with an adult.
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Kristi Guinness
It's really engaging. There's flaps and there's moving parts for kids, and it feels really fun and like game like to read. But it also teaches really complex ideas for young kids, like the water cycle or aquatic habitats, or taking care of water and lots of other ones. So each page is filled with great illustrations. My two year old loves it and I think he'll love it at seven.
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Kristi Guinness
Also, there's a lot of access points.
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Emily Smith
I love that you bring up the physicality of the book there too. And Amanda, I was going to say it earlier when you were talking about drama, because in the rereading and fluency work, you were moving while you were talking about the dramatization of books. And I just think it should feel physical and like that kind of engagement, that physical engagement where you're acting out a character and you're shaking the fist.
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Emily Smith
If that's part of what the going on in the story of the character is angry, or if you're in this ultimate book of water and you're engaged with it, physically exploring it. There are lots of different ways to make reading more active for our youngest kids, for all kids, really.
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Kristi Guinness
But yeah, it's nice to engage in different ways.,
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Amanda Hartman
And also to remind us that nonfiction is also important to work on fluency.
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All Hosts
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
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Emily Smith
So I have two books that I would like to recommend today. They're a little more towards middle grade. I have Honeybee by Candace Fleming and Eric Roman. This is a beautiful nonfiction text obviously about honeybees, but really such thorough research and the illustrations are drop dead gorgeous and engaging. So it's just a really powerful nonfiction text. What I really appreciate about this one is that it almost feels like poetry.
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Emily Smith
And so when I was thinking about our topic today of fluency and things that you might want to reread because they sound good, like songs that you want to sing repeatedly, this text, Honeybee, while it's a nonfiction text that's teaching a lot of content about honeybees, it also feels like almost a poem, a long form poem, and a picture book.
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Emily Smith
So really beautiful.
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Kristi Guinness
I think those kinds of texts are really important for kids to see that nonfiction doesn't go one way.
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Emily Smith
And I love Candace Fleming's books often have an author's note that is really powerfully written as well, with tons more information. You know, a lot more information. So I recommend those as part of the reading to not to skip them.
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Amanda Hartman
And she's an award winning writer for children, so anything by Candace should be a must.
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Emily Smith
Yeah. Good to always think about authorship too, in terms of that will lead you to more books. And then the other book I just picked up recently, this is One Big Open Sky by Lesa Kline-Ransome and I have just started this. It is a book written in in verse. So it's a historical novel. I love historical fiction.
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Emily Smith
I always feel like you're learning content, but because it's written in verse, I think again, it might be something that might be worth reading aloud. Oftentimes, novels in verse are reading, worth reading aloud and thinking about in terms of fluency. So kids in even into middle school ages, maybe more willing to read this novel because they can get a lot of content pretty quickly and the story moves along and it is long, but but it's not tedious.
00;23;11;03 - 00;23;16;14
Emily Smith
And so I think that is often a winner to for middle grade readers.
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Amanda Hartman
Sure. And that idea of a novel and verse, it does aid the ideas of phrasing and stress because there's not too many words on a line. So that's also interesting.
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Emily Smith
Okay, Amanda, you have a few for us as well.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah. So my first one is Truth Is by Hannah Sawyerr This was a National Book Award finalist. It was on the shortlist. Yep. For young adult literature this past year. And it is also a novel in verse. And I thought about it for the same reason. She's a 17 year old slam poet. So that's also really, really cool.
00;24;01;12 - 00;24;28;28
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, that it's real life purposes for, you know, reading out loud to audiences. It's about the a 17 year old girl who has to navigate the complexities of life as a young adult. So it explores reproductive rights, complex family dynamics, friendship, courage to find out and to be and define who you are. It's a beautiful book. I really enjoyed it.
00;24;28;29 - 00;24;55;01
Amanda Hartman
And my second one is a memoir called Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas. And this is actually a book that he adapted from an adult version that he wrote. This is a young readers edition about his life, and he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Again, these these writers have such talent that they're bringing to these books about his life.
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Amanda Hartman
When he was sent from the Philippines to the United States when he was 12 to live with his grandparents. So it's exploring also the idea of identity and what it means to be American and what it means to belong and to live in the United States as undocumented. So it's a powerful book and also just a different kind of nonfiction, a memoir.
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Amanda Hartman
So those are my two picks.
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Emily Smith
Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, so thank you all for being with us, for listening to our series, Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. Thank you, Amanda and Kristi for joining me today. We hope this continues to spark curiosity and conversations outside the classroom with your kids, and supports the growth and enjoyment that you have together around literacy. Remember, literacy isn't just about the books they read in school, it's about the stories we share, the world we explore, and the conversations we have.
00;26;02;22 - 00;26;21;26
Emily Smith
To stay connected with our community head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to subscribe so that you can receive the next episode of this series. Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. Our new episodes come out each month, and along with each one, you will find a short handout for you and those interested in supporting children's literacy outside of school.
00;26;21;29 - 00;26;49;11
Emily Smith
If you find value in these conversations, please leave us a five star rating and a review and be sure to share the show with your friends and family. Thank you! You can follow us on social media at TC Literacy on Instagram Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, blue Sky and now YouTube. Plus, you can check out our website for our next events and opportunities for professional development at AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu.
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Emily Smith
We hope you join us again. Keep advancing literacy. One word, one book, and one conversation at a time. Thank you.
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All Hosts
Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thank you.
Amanda Hartman
Thank you for being here. Welcome to Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. This podcast is for families and caregivers to support the literacy learning that goes on outside of school. We welcome all of you to join us to make learning fun and purposeful. We know that literacy learning is a life thing and not just a school thing. As family members and caregivers, we know your role is central to your kids literacy development.
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Amanda Hartman
You may have young children, kids, pre-teens, or young adults. We have recommendations to support their literacy journey. Let's get started. I'm Amanda Hartman.
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Emily Smith
I'm Kristi Guinness, and I'm Emily Smith. We are staff developers at Advancing Literacy at Teachers College in New York City. We're a center within the Teacher Education and Community Partnerships Division, providing professional development for school districts in the New York City metro area, across the country and worldwide. This school year, we will offer over 20 free workshops for families, caregivers, and educators, and you can find our events in future workshops on our social media pages at Tse lit and our website.
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Emily Smith
AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu. We are delighted to have Kristi Guinness part of our team at Advancing Literacy with us for this episode. Welcome, Kristi. Thanks. Happy to be here. So we usually begin by discussing our title and any relevant definitions. So could you get us started with this?
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Kristi Guinness
Sure. Today we’ll be talking about fluency. I thought we could start with a metaphor from Doctor Tim, who does a ton of research and fluency to ground us in this idea. So if you picture a bridge on one side of that bridge is a child's ability to decode, which is how they sound out or break apart words. And on the other side of the bridge is comprehension. Do they understand what they are reading? The bridge connects them is fluency. So across this episode we'll talk more about fluency. But I thought first we could start to talk about personal stories or memories that we have about fluency that stand out to you as a parent or a caregiver, or even from your own reading experience that's relevant to fluency.
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Amanda Hartman
For sure. I have lots of memories of reading at school, and I remember pretty vividly being in small groups where we did round robin reading, where each person would read aloud a sentence or a part of the book, and maybe the group had six children in the group, and we all knew in our part was coming. And I moved to that page and would practice it again and again and again and again and again in my head, because I wanted it to come out perfect.
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Amanda Hartman
I wanted to come out fluently, so I have no idea what the other parts were about. I wasn't paying attention to other parts of the text, but I was really concerned with how I was going to sound out loud.
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Emily Smith
Yeah.
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Emily Smith
That's interesting. The performance of it like I have to read and perform.
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Emily Smith
And.
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Emily Smith
Thank you, Christie. I think that bridge metaphor is really helpful for us to start with. So memories.
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Emily Smith
I have.
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Emily Smith
A really fond memory that comes to mind about my niece, who's 22 now, but I remember when she was an early reader, probably around first grade, and I think she was reading a sort of early chapter book like Poppleton, like by Cynthia Rylant. She was working at the reading part of it, and I suggested that one of the things she could do in order to reread it was to sing it, and she thought that was hysterical, and then proceeded to, like, belt out this book where it was obviously not a song, but she was reading it like putting a tune to it and dramatic, and we just burst out laughing.
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Emily Smith
It comes to mind because I think it can be joyful to perform books and to. And even if they're not meant to be performed in that way, it was just sort of a way to to have a reason to reread and to put it to song made it more fluent, which was fun for her.
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Kristi Guinness
Yeah. That's so fun.
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Emily Smith
Yeah. And what about for you? What have you got?
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Kristi Guinness
Thank you.
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Emily Smith
What comes to mind for you?
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Kristi Guinness
Yeah. I have two young children at home and my two year old. He loves to reread the same book over and over and over at bedtime. So once we've read a book a bunch of times, he can often, like, recite the words, right? So he's not looking at print. He's not, quote unquote reading words, but he remembered the words that go with the pictures, and he's able to reread the story, and he really loves to change his voice on funny parts.
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Kristi Guinness
And I noticed that he'll go, like, fast in a certain part or slow in a certain part. So he's kind of copying my fluency, which is fun to see, even with the child who's not yet decoding that, they can still have fluency.
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Emily Smith
Yeah, he's learning from you and your reading. Amazing.
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Amanda Hartman
So important. Like when we read out loud to children that model because they pick it up everywhere.
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Kristi Guinness
There's so many things they're learning when we're reading aloud to them. Yeah, absolutely.
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Emily Smith
Okay, so once we unpack the title, the next thing we tend to do is take a few minutes to think about some research. And for this, I think it might be helpful for us to get into some of the myths that exist about fluency and get ourselves on the same page, so to speak. So I'll start with myth number one.
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Emily Smith
I think that many people believe that if a student reads quickly, then they're a fluent reader. So, Kristi could you help us unpack this a bit?
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Kristi Guinness
Yeah, I think it's helpful to think of fluency not as a race to the finish line, but the ability to read with enough ease that the brain can actually focus on the meaning of the words, rather than trying to figure out what the word is. So to answer your question, Emily, there's three parts of fluency that we can break apart.
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Kristi Guinness
So the first is accuracy. And that is simply getting the words right, which is of course really important in reading. The second is automaticity, which is a fancy word for pace. And it's not about reading super fast, but reading effortlessly. So if you think about a long distance runner. They have a really strong pace. They aren't sprinting, but they also aren't encountering many hurdles.
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Kristi Guinness
Their pace is just right. And the same is true when you're reading. The last part of fluency is prosody, which means reading with expression, and that is like pausing. If there is a period, or raising your voice when there's a question mark, or changing your voice when a character is really excited or matching your voice to the mood of the story.
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Kristi Guinness
And when those three things come together accuracy, pace and expression, that bridge is really strong. So yeah, I think about for parents and caregivers, when we think about supporting our kids with fluency, one habit you could create is rereading. Rereading is a really powerful, research supported way to improve fluency. So when a child reads a book for the first time, they might have to work really hard to decode a bunch of words which can make their pace of reading slower.
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Kristi Guinness
And then the second time they read, they might not have to work as hard to figure out so many words, so their pace can be a bit quicker and they can understand the text even more because the words weren't so hard.
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Emily Smith
And they might be more accurate. Also, if they self-correct it, or if you help them and help them look again at words and correct. Yeah, yeah.
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Amanda Hartman
I mean, I think this piece of research from Doctor Tim Rasinski is really important to ground these practices. And so that's really helpful.
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Kristi Guinness
Okay. So there's another myth that fluency practice is only important for younger kids. Amanda could you talk about that one?
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Amanda Hartman
Sure. I'd love to mean certainly beginning readers who are mostly in our primary grades are working and building more and more fluency in their reading and also upper grade and middle schoolers as well. So there's also research about how important it is to work on and develop fluency, even as you're older and encountering more and more complex text.
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Amanda Hartman
So David Page and some of his colleagues out of Northern Illinois University did some research around this that really looks at maybe not so much at the decoding aspect of reading, but what you were talking about, the phrasing, the expression we call that as a fancy word. Prosody in reading is really important. So even kids who are older and more sophisticated readers still can work on that idea of repeated reading or reading in pairs together, or even bringing more drama to their reading that helps to improve their fluency.
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Kristi Guinness
Thank you for saying that. It's helpful to remember that fluency isn't something that you learn and and don't need to work on anymore, that it changes if the book gets harder. If you're reading something you don't know a lot about that you might have to still really work hard at your fluency.
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Emily Smith
And I think part of that we might think about even the role of fluency in public speaking and your ability to feel comfortable reading text aloud or just having that, that sort of confidence. And for our kids who are certainly by, you know, adolescents and young adulthood are reading independently, in most instances, they still have lots of circumstances in which they could benefit for from some fluency practice.
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Emily Smith
I'm thinking, even just for a minute, about my dissertation defense. And when I was getting ready for it, I was rehearsing like, how am I going to sound when I read this part of it? Or talk about this? And that sort of rehearsal is something that people, professionals are doing all the time. Sure. Yeah, sure.
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Amanda Hartman
Like for speeches and things like.
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Emily Smith
Speeches, whatever it might be. Okay, great.
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Amanda Hartman
So, Emily, what about let's take on a third myth to work on debunking. Some people say fluency and comprehension are different skills developed separately. Fluency comes first and comprehension comes next. What do you say about that?
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Emily Smith
I say no, no. In fact, it's really helpful for us as as teachers, but also certainly for families and caregivers who are supporting kids development to understand that fluency and comprehension can develop simultaneously. And I think you'll see on our slide LaBarge and Samuel's research on this topic. But I think it's important for us to imagine that we may have a situation in which you might hear a student reading and their reading is less fluent, and you might say, let's talk about that part of that text, or let's talk about the book that we're reading, and then have them reread.
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Emily Smith
You'll understand the text a bit more, and then to go back and reread, and the reading can become much more fluent that these things again, that metaphor of a bridge is an important one, that they're very much related, and treating them as distinct from each other is not helpful. So that we can we can expect that simultaneous development.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because when kids are reading and they don't really reflect so much about what the text is showing or it's not in their voice, even just by prompting them a little bit to say, hey, wait, what's going on here? Or how's the character feeling? And then they're like, oh, she's really mad, or I'm not sure.
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Amanda Hartman
Let me go back and reread this and and think about it. They will change their voice and reflect that that meaning. Or, you know, just with that thought in their head can help aid more like expression. Or when they're reading, they read it with expression and then you say, oh, wait, so what do we now know about what's happening here?
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Amanda Hartman
And they're like, oh yeah, I do know that because I just read it in a certain way, right?
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Emily Smith
Or the expression might be off. I think as.
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Amanda Hartman
Good point.
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Emily Smith
As a parent reading aloud to my kids, there have always been times when I'm like, wait a minute, I have to reread that part. I misread it based on the scene. I didn't, you know, it was a cold read. I hadn't read it before. So sure, I didn't know that the character was actually whispering and I was instead in a full voice, I so I might say, let me reread that part and fix it up so it sounds the way it's supposed to.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah. And we want kids to know that that's not like bad to do.
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Kristi Guinness
It feels important to model for kids that we can go back and we can fix up our reading. I think it's also easy to go on autopilot, too, as a reader sometimes. Right. You kind of just like you get sucked into a book you really like, and you're reading and you're reading, but you also can start to like, zone out a little bit or lose track of what's happening.
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Kristi Guinness
So fluency, if you're reading out loud, can sometimes be that like Hazy Wintu to like what's happening for your kid. And like, if they're reading sounds a little maybe like flat, it could be let's just like think about really what's happening here. It's like reactivating for your kid.
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Emily Smith
I would imagine any tired parent or caregiver has memories of being on autopilot as a reader. When reading to kids, I think that idea of presence, if the comprehension is about having a real presence in connection to the text as you're reading it.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah, that's a great point. It makes me think also about like our most beginning kids in reading might be reading word by word, particularly on a first read, and then on a second read maybe they scoop up a little bit more like 2 or 3 word phrases. So just that expectation for a beginning reader compared to an advanced reader is important.
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Amanda Hartman
Like there's still work for both groups.
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Emily Smith
Absolutely.
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Emily Smith
Okay.
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Emily Smith
Well, I think this has given us some, you know, some myths and facts versus in terms of research. And usually the next thing we do is talk about some suggestions. We've had some along the way, but I think we can add to the list. And Kristy, what are some things you're thinking about in terms of suggestions or recommendations for caregivers and families in providing support with fluency?
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Kristi Guinness
I think to follow up with what Amanda just said, like for young readers, there's a lot that they're juggling. It's hard work. So the first time they read, they really are just figuring out the words, reading it word by word, trying to then maybe read 2 or 3 words at a time. So I think it's important with our younger readers, our five, six, seven year olds, to also pay attention to the punctuation on the page.
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Kristi Guinness
And it's not just about the words, which there is a heavy emphasis on and there needs to be. But we also want to consider changing our voice when there is a question mark or when a character is talking with dialog. Emily, you gave the example of, oh, I didn't know she was whispering there. Right? So sometimes you need to read it and then realize what's happening with the character and go back.
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Kristi Guinness
So I think having an emphasis on that expression piece and really holding on to that when working with our kids feels equally as important as making sure they're being accurate and getting the words correct and rereading is a great thing to do to support that.
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Amanda Hartman
Yeah, it's so important. I mean, I just think of all the kids who I see ignore the punctuation on the page, and they just try to read it as fast as they can. And it's a race, right? Exactly. And punctuations, they're just slow us down. And to get us to pause and to think.
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Kristi Guinness
And we can say to our kids that those marks are from the author to tell us how to read it. So use those clues to help you.
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Emily Smith
Right, and to practice. Like the question mark your voice is going to raise up at the end of that of the sentence of the question or an exclamation. Absolutely.
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Kristi Guinness
Amanda, what are some fun ways that you like to think about practicing fluency with kids?
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Amanda Hartman
Well, there's so much work around drama that I know we kind of hinted towards that idea earlier, of just thinking about rereading text to bring a more dramatic voice to your reading. And I think one thing that you could do as a caregiver or as a parent is you could share the book and you could play different roles inside that book together, take on different parts, and kind of act it out.
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Amanda Hartman
That could be kind of fun to do, or to choose a scene like a good part of the book, to act out and take on some, some roles together. A second thing that I'm always reminded by Doctor Tim the power of music. And Emily, you talked about this earlier of singing a text and song and music he says, is so important to that bridge to develop fluency.
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Amanda Hartman
So maybe you all are part of a chorus or a choir, or you have some great special occasions to sing songs together, take out lyrics and have them next to you to read and sing along. Maybe it's while you're commuting or it's a special event with your family.
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Kristi Guinness
That's such a great reminder that reading isn't just books. There's literacy everywhere.
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Emily Smith
And so many of our favorite musicians. It's also about their phrasing, their decisions, and then the rhythm and the music brings it together.
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Emily Smith
Sort of.
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Amanda Hartman
Absolutely. And so it gives them great practice, but also some joy.
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Emily Smith
Absolutely. Okay. So I think we're in the next area where we start to recommend some books, right. Hopefully those suggestions are helpful to all of you. And what's new in children's literature and picture books. Christy, you want to start us off?
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Kristi Guinness
Sure. Yeah, I have two one is fiction and one is nonfiction. So I have Hello Tobi! by Andrea Cáceres, and she is a Venezuelan author and illustrator. So I also love when the author and illustrator is the same person. That's fine. She lives in New York City, and it's a beautiful picture book for young children about a family going to their neighborhood park.
00;19;07;22 - 00;19;17;03
Kristi Guinness
And they see families of all sorts that are similar and different than theirs and really embracing your community. So it's a lovely picture book for kids.
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Emily Smith
It sounds like a great one to reread, and that would be like a bedtime favorite that you could imagine. Yeah, lots of rereading and fluency could happen there.
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Kristi Guinness
Definitely. The next one is The Ultimate Book of Water, which is a nonfiction big book. So like I was like 18in big. So it's really fun to put on the floor and to kind of play with. And it's by Anne-Sophie Baumann and it's actually a series. So there's lots of them. There's Ultimate Book of Cities and Construction and Space, and it's really great for both toddlers and young elementary ages to read with an adult.
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Kristi Guinness
It's really engaging. There's flaps and there's moving parts for kids, and it feels really fun and like game like to read. But it also teaches really complex ideas for young kids, like the water cycle or aquatic habitats, or taking care of water and lots of other ones. So each page is filled with great illustrations. My two year old loves it and I think he'll love it at seven.
00;20;12;02 - 00;20;14;06
Kristi Guinness
Also, there's a lot of access points.
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Emily Smith
I love that you bring up the physicality of the book there too. And Amanda, I was going to say it earlier when you were talking about drama, because in the rereading and fluency work, you were moving while you were talking about the dramatization of books. And I just think it should feel physical and like that kind of engagement, that physical engagement where you're acting out a character and you're shaking the fist.
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Emily Smith
If that's part of what the going on in the story of the character is angry, or if you're in this ultimate book of water and you're engaged with it, physically exploring it. There are lots of different ways to make reading more active for our youngest kids, for all kids, really.
00;20;51;15 - 00;20;53;23
Kristi Guinness
But yeah, it's nice to engage in different ways.,
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Amanda Hartman
And also to remind us that nonfiction is also important to work on fluency.
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All Hosts
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
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Emily Smith
So I have two books that I would like to recommend today. They're a little more towards middle grade. I have Honeybee by Candace Fleming and Eric Roman. This is a beautiful nonfiction text obviously about honeybees, but really such thorough research and the illustrations are drop dead gorgeous and engaging. So it's just a really powerful nonfiction text. What I really appreciate about this one is that it almost feels like poetry.
00;21;32;04 - 00;21;55;06
Emily Smith
And so when I was thinking about our topic today of fluency and things that you might want to reread because they sound good, like songs that you want to sing repeatedly, this text, Honeybee, while it's a nonfiction text that's teaching a lot of content about honeybees, it also feels like almost a poem, a long form poem, and a picture book.
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Emily Smith
So really beautiful.
00;21;56;12 - 00;22;01;12
Kristi Guinness
I think those kinds of texts are really important for kids to see that nonfiction doesn't go one way.
00;22;01;13 - 00;22;16;04
Emily Smith
And I love Candace Fleming's books often have an author's note that is really powerfully written as well, with tons more information. You know, a lot more information. So I recommend those as part of the reading to not to skip them.
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Amanda Hartman
And she's an award winning writer for children, so anything by Candace should be a must.
00;22;23;09 - 00;22;42;25
Emily Smith
Yeah. Good to always think about authorship too, in terms of that will lead you to more books. And then the other book I just picked up recently, this is One Big Open Sky by Lesa Kline-Ransome and I have just started this. It is a book written in in verse. So it's a historical novel. I love historical fiction.
00;22;42;27 - 00;23;11;03
Emily Smith
I always feel like you're learning content, but because it's written in verse, I think again, it might be something that might be worth reading aloud. Oftentimes, novels in verse are reading, worth reading aloud and thinking about in terms of fluency. So kids in even into middle school ages, maybe more willing to read this novel because they can get a lot of content pretty quickly and the story moves along and it is long, but but it's not tedious.
00;23;11;03 - 00;23;16;14
Emily Smith
And so I think that is often a winner to for middle grade readers.
00;23;16;15 - 00;23;30;24
Amanda Hartman
Sure. And that idea of a novel and verse, it does aid the ideas of phrasing and stress because there's not too many words on a line. So that's also interesting.
00;23;30;26 - 00;23;33;09
Emily Smith
Okay, Amanda, you have a few for us as well.
00;23;33;11 - 00;24;01;11
Amanda Hartman
Yeah. So my first one is Truth Is by Hannah Sawyerr This was a National Book Award finalist. It was on the shortlist. Yep. For young adult literature this past year. And it is also a novel in verse. And I thought about it for the same reason. She's a 17 year old slam poet. So that's also really, really cool.
00;24;01;12 - 00;24;28;28
Amanda Hartman
Yeah, that it's real life purposes for, you know, reading out loud to audiences. It's about the a 17 year old girl who has to navigate the complexities of life as a young adult. So it explores reproductive rights, complex family dynamics, friendship, courage to find out and to be and define who you are. It's a beautiful book. I really enjoyed it.
00;24;28;29 - 00;24;55;01
Amanda Hartman
And my second one is a memoir called Dear America by Jose Antonio Vargas. And this is actually a book that he adapted from an adult version that he wrote. This is a young readers edition about his life, and he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Again, these these writers have such talent that they're bringing to these books about his life.
00;24;55;01 - 00;25;20;19
Amanda Hartman
When he was sent from the Philippines to the United States when he was 12 to live with his grandparents. So it's exploring also the idea of identity and what it means to be American and what it means to belong and to live in the United States as undocumented. So it's a powerful book and also just a different kind of nonfiction, a memoir.
00;25;20;20 - 00;25;22;23
Amanda Hartman
So those are my two picks.
00;25;22;24 - 00;26;02;21
Emily Smith
Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, so thank you all for being with us, for listening to our series, Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. Thank you, Amanda and Kristi for joining me today. We hope this continues to spark curiosity and conversations outside the classroom with your kids, and supports the growth and enjoyment that you have together around literacy. Remember, literacy isn't just about the books they read in school, it's about the stories we share, the world we explore, and the conversations we have.
00;26;02;22 - 00;26;21;26
Emily Smith
To stay connected with our community head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to subscribe so that you can receive the next episode of this series. Advancing Literacy Beyond the Classroom. Our new episodes come out each month, and along with each one, you will find a short handout for you and those interested in supporting children's literacy outside of school.
00;26;21;29 - 00;26;49;11
Emily Smith
If you find value in these conversations, please leave us a five star rating and a review and be sure to share the show with your friends and family. Thank you! You can follow us on social media at TC Literacy on Instagram Threads, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, blue Sky and now YouTube. Plus, you can check out our website for our next events and opportunities for professional development at AdvancingLiteracy.tc.columbia.edu.
00;26;49;14 - 00;26;59;28
Emily Smith
We hope you join us again. Keep advancing literacy. One word, one book, and one conversation at a time. Thank you.
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All Hosts
Thank you. Thanks everyone. Thank you.
