Instruction for optimal fluency and comprehension: Approaches and possibilities

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

As Thomas Hobbes famously observed in 1668, “scientia potestas est.” This expression is usually translated as “knowledge is power.” In our modern and technologically-driven era, reading cannot be divorced from knowledge, and, by extension, therefore, cannot be divorced from power. In this epoch of globalization, the “haves” are, often, those who can read and understand text. Not being able to do so can greatly increase an individual’s chances of remaining amongst the “have nots” in a worldwide social order where being able to read increases one’s opportunities to secure monetary gain.

If reading is power in the modern age, and if a society guided by Ubuntu is one defined by its inherent equality, then imagining a future of Ubuntu-inspired education means imagining a future where all students learn to read fluently and with comprehension in the earliest grades of school. Today, only a fraction of primary school-age children worldwide learn to read with speed, accuracy, expressivity, and understanding. By some estimates, as many as 10% of children in at the primary level in the US can be classified as possessing average-for-age reading accuracy but as having poor reading comprehension (Nation & Snowling, 1997). In other contexts, available data from recent early grade reading assessments (EGRAs) suggest that the percentage of children in this category may be even larger. If we are to imagine an Ubuntu-inspired future for education, therefore, then it is imperative that we imagine how high-quality fluency and comprehension instruction can become a standard feature of all classrooms, rather than being largely confined to the global North.

Fluency and comprehension are mutually reinforcing; when learners increase their rate and accuracy of word reading, they are better able to focus on the meaning of the words they read. Improving and expanding fluency and comprehension instruction, however, has proven challenging for several reasons. First, reading with fluency (speed, accuracy, and prosody), and with comprehension is a demanding cognitive task. The Rand Reading Study Group report (2001) explains that to read with fluency, “readers must demonstrate an understanding of the syntactic structures of text by chunking groups of words.…they must also incorporate a set of suprasegmental features (e.g. intonation patterns) that both speakers and hearers would interpret as expressive of the meaning of the text read.” The same report describes comprehension as “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language,” a process which can take years to master. In short, children need time and repeated practice from the earliest days of school to be able to read fluently and with understanding. Both are often absent from early grade reading classrooms around the world, with the logical consequence that children’s fluency and comprehension skills may not develop fast enough, or may not develop at all.

Second, precisely because reading fluently and with comprehension is a complex undertaking, teaching children to do so often requires greater instructional ability than many teachers possess. Teachers must be innovative, reflective, responsive, and discursive to teach these skills, and able to model, explicitly, activating and using background knowledge, generating and asking questions, making inferences, predicting, visualizing, etc. Many teachers worldwide do not know how to employ these strategies in their own reading, let alone being able to teach children to employ them, or being able to help young learners how to select among them as a function of the texts that are to be read. Over time, this creates a vicious cycle; because teachers do not know how to teach fluency and comprehension skills, children do not acquire them; those children then grow into adults who cannot teach fluency and comprehension, and therefore raise generations of learners who in turn also lack those skills.

This panel asks the question: where do we begin, as a global community, to interrupt this cycle and to improve the quality of fluency and comprehension instruction in developing country contexts? Reading experts working around the globe share their practical experiences in structuring professional development and classroom support such that fluency and comprehension can be taught in resource-lean” environments. Based on these experiences, the panelists share suggestions for a conceptual framework that could help drive instructional choices about the fluency and comprehension instruction. These presentations offer the opportunity to envision how we can enhance comprehension and fluency instruction in the near-term, and convert the instruction of reading with understanding into a tool for approaching Ubuntu, rather than accepting a status quo that leaves the power of reading in the hands of only a few worldwide.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Global Literacy

Organizer

• Rebecca Rhodes, USAID

Chair

• Marcia Davidson, Cambridge Education

Individual Presentations

• Blending content and pedagogy for better comprehension - Carol da Silva, FHI 360

• Planning and organizing for success in fluency and comprehension - Diane Prouty, Creative Associates International

• Differentiating and enriching fluency and comprehension instruction - Rachel Christina, Education Development Center

• Building coaches’ capacity to support fluency and comprehension instruction - Jean Beaumont, Juarez and Associates

• Integrating fluency and comprehension instruction into the reading curriculum: Lessons learned and suggested strategies - Margaret "Peggy" Dubeck, RTI International / UVA