Tompkins Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of Tompkins discusses fluency in reading and writing. I especially was intrigued by the explanation of how different levels of readers decode words. "Capable readers notice all or almost all letters in a word, whereas less capable readers do not completely analyze letter sequences of words. Struggling readers with limited phonics skills often try to decode words by sounding out the beginning sound and then making a wild guess at the word without using the cueing systems to verify their guesses" (Tomkins, 165). I have noticed this difference in reading fluency in my 2nd grade class. There are several readers who are very fluent and are conscious of every letter of the words and therefore able to read accurately. On the other hand, there are several students who read a word and get stuck at the start of the word and guess what word it is. For example, I was reading with a student (“Susie”) and she saw the word “power”. The students had just been reading Native American legends and so when she saw the start of the word “power”, she assumed it said “powwow” and read the word as “powwow”. I was intrigued to see her make that assumption because it signaled to me that she was not reading fluently. Additionally, she did not read with expression (prosody) which was another signal to me that she was not reading fluently. I have noticed over all that most of the students in the 2nd grade class are not fluent readers and writers which tells me that it is accurate that most students are not fluent until they are a bit older.

Chapter 5

“Researchers report that the big difference between students who identify words effectively and those who do not is whether they survey the letters in the word and analyze the interior components. Capable readers notice all or almost all letters in a word, whereas less capable readers do not completely analyze the letter sequences of words. Struggling readers with limited phonics skills often try to decode words by sounding out the beginning sound and then making a wild guess at the word without using the cueing systems to verify their guesses” (165). Just as this quote states, this situation really happened in my field when I was going around testing students on high-frequency words. My CT gave me a list of high-frequency words, and I was to call on students one by one and ask them to read the word. If they read it incorrectly, then I was to mark the word. A lot of the students were doing great with reading the words. But it was couple students who were having a hard time reading. One student was Farzeel, a student who has missed half of the school days, and comes to school late most of the time. When I started to test the high-frequency words, I was extremely frustrated. He was going well with the first column, but once he started to read the second list, he seemed like he was getting stuck, because there was pauses before sounding out the word. Then, what he was doing was interesting but at the same time disappointing. He started to sound the letters one by one, and then he read the word. It was interesting to see him do this, because none of the students in this class was seen doing this. On the other hand, it was frustrating because he was saying the words incorrectly, making wild guesses like the quote states. In addition, when he sounded the word incorrectly, I corrected him by saying the word correctly. Then he would say, “That’s what I just said…”

Based on this observation, I observed Farzeel read books in class, since it was March Reading Month. The class was required to read at least five books to one of the helpers. The first thing I noticed is that he was unable to concentrate when he was reading. When he finished reading one page, then he would talk about irrelevant things with the helper. Obviously, it was hard to make him concentrate back to the readings, because he would talk about endless stories. Another thing that I observed is that he would stutter frequently and were many pauses. It seemed like it was because he was unable to read a lot of the words. So he was sounding out the letters first and reading the word. So this took a long time for him to finish one book. Being able to read fluently affects so many areas of learning. Just by knowing the high-frequency words, it helps a reader become fluent in reading. If not, it affects how the student reads, and it also becomes an obstacle to the student.

Tompkins Ch. 5

The part of this chapter on developing fluent readers and writers that I enjoyed the most was the part on word recognition. I really enjoyed what the author had to say on this, because I feel that word recognition is something I see a lot in the field. Tompkins wrote about how children are more likely to recognize the word whale than the word what,"because whale conjures up the image of an aquatic mammal, whereas what is abstract. However, what is used much more frequently, and children need to learn to recognize it" (p. 158). Words like what, could, to, etc. are called sight words because they aren't pronounced phonetically, so children can't easily decode them, therefore they are words that children learn by sight and by forming a relationship of how that word is said.

My CT has a word wall in the classroom, but after reading the list of high-frequency words in the book, I think my CT could add a lot more than what she already has. Her word wall is divided alphabetically and each letter has a few words under it, but since I'm in a first/second split class, I think more sight words would be beneficial to them. I've noticed that my students are getting really good at sounding out words and focus on on sound-letter relationships, but when they try to do that with a sight word they get stuck. I haven't seen my CT add any new words to the word wall since I first saw it at the beginning of the year, and Tompkins mentions in the chapter that word walls should be added to as new vocab is introduced and new elements of literacy are introduced. I think the students in my class would really benefit by seeing new sight words get added to the word wall, because they are so observant that they would always be looking for new words and this would really help with their fluency.