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.