ELL Strategies for Reading and Fluency

Unique variables present themselves when teaching fluency to English Language Learners. In this session, we will explore the balancing act around the instruction of fluency to enhance reading comprehension for English Language Learners. Some of the main points are as follows:

  • Reading Fluency is reading accuracy+automaticity+ prosody. In order for students to show us they are truly fluent and are on a solid pathway to understanding, students need all three.
  • Reading fluency is not reading fast.
  • Reading fluency for ELL’s can be misrepresented. We may diagnose a low fluency score as a need for skills based instruction. Although ELL students need access to those skills, if too much time is spent on these skills students may still struggle.

So how do we use the instruction of reading fluency to enhance comprehension?

Timothy Rasinski talks about deep reading and wide reading. We will discuss these strategies and activities that may encourage not only reading fluency but oral language fluency as well. For ELL’s if they do not have oral language fluency in place, we cannot expect them to have strong skills in reading fluency. As a result of this, we need to make sure that we are creating a balance in our approach to teaching fluency so that students are working on both oral language and reading language skills succinctly.

To see resources, links to videos, and the presentation slides for this session, click here.

To see examples of fluency assessments to use with students, click here.

To see Timothy Shanahan speak about reading fluency for ELLs, click here.  You can also read his blog regarding ELL’s and Fluency.

You can also read ELL’s and Reading Fluency in English and Reading 101 for English Language Learners from Colorin Colorado’s website!

This entry was posted in Professional Development, Reading by Molly Williams. Bookmark the permalink.
Molly Williams

About Molly Williams

Molly Williams works for Lincoln Public Schools as an ELL instructional coach. She currently partners with teaching and learning communities at Hartley, Meadow Lane, Belmont, Elliott, Pyrtle, Kahoa, Huntington, Riley, Norwood Park, Morley, Pershing, Eastridge, Prescott and Randolph Elementary Schools.

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