May 30, 2025 • 53 mins
Episode 227
In this episode, Jan Hasbrouck discusses the critical components of reading fluency, focusing on automaticity and its measurement through words correct per minute (WCPM). The discussion highlights the relationship between fluency and comprehension, the role of oral reading fluency in assessing student progress, and the importance of frequent assessments in the classroom. Jan also reflects on recent research findings from NAEP scores that challenge previous assumptions about fluency and automaticity, emphasizing the need for educators to adapt their understanding and practices based on evolving research. The discussion also touches on the debate between repeated reading and wide reading, advocating for an approach to reading instruction that incorporates both methods. Hasbrouck encourages educators to embrace continuous learning and adapt their teaching strategies based on evolving research.
Resources
- Hasbrouck Tindal 2017 ORF Norms Chart
- 2018 NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Study by White, S., et. al.
- Listen to more Melissa & Lori podcast episodes on Fluency!
We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.
Grab free resources and episode alerts! Sign up for our email list at literacypodcast.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lori (00:01):
Do you have students who struggle to effortlessly and
accurately decode words?
Understanding how students canquickly recognize words without
effort is key to boostingreading fluency.
Melissa (00:13):
In today's episode, we'll talk to expert Jan
Hasbrook and she'll tell us whyautomaticity matters, how it
impacts comprehension and howyou can help your students build
this essential skill.
Lori (00:27):
Hi teacher friends.
I'm Lori and I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
know you do too.
Melissa (00:37):
We worked together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.
Lori (00:42):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.
Melissa (00:47):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Hi, jan, welcome back to thepodcast.
We're so excited to talk aboutfluency again with you today.
Jan Hasbrouck (01:01):
Never done talking about fluency.
There's always something to say.
Melissa (01:04):
We love talking about fluency.
It's nice something to say.
We love talking about fluency.
It's nice to be back, thank youfor the invitation.
Lori (01:09):
Of course, and it is one of our listeners' favorite
topics.
Everything on social media thatwe put about fluency just goes
crazy.
So we are really excited todayto really focus on automaticity,
which we know is a reallyimportant element of fluency.
So I'm hoping you can start usoff by sharing a little bit
about the relationship betweenwords correct per minute, which
(01:32):
our listeners might be familiarwith the acronym WCPM, and
automaticity in reading right?
So how do these impact youroverall reading fluency?
Jan Hasbrouck (01:43):
Well that we measure automaticity with WCPM.
There may be other ways ofmeasuring it.
There probably are.
But as practitioners in aclassroom that is the typical
way we measure automaticity andI think that's one of the
(02:03):
problems or challenges that theassessment people who understand
that WCPM is measuringautomaticity, that's not always
conveyed to teachers and itreally feels in many ways like
you're just measuring rate, likeyou're just measuring rate and
we often talk about rate or evenspeed as part of fluency.
(02:30):
The National Reading Panel didthat In their chapter on fluency
.
They kept talking about fluencyin slightly different ways, but
always the same threecomponents.
It's always accuracy, rate andexpression or prosody.
But there were some times inthe National Reading Panel where
(02:50):
they said fluency is theability to read quickly,
accurately and with goodexpression.
Thinking has evolved a littlebit and I've been assured by one
of the co-authors of thatchapter that reading quickly
(03:11):
would not be listed as thedefinitive component because
it's not the quickness, it isthe automaticity and
automaticity.
We prefer that term because itdoes include accuracy.
Accuracy you all know I'vepreached it so many times.
Accuracy is the foundation offluency.
That's where we start that wecannot sacrifice accuracy if
(03:36):
comprehension is our goal, whichit always is.
So once we have a foundation ofaccuracy and that can be at,
you know, just even at a letterlevel we're talking about.
This letter is M and now youknow it.
Now let's see if we canidentify it a little more
quickly.
And that quick identificationof a letter, a sound, a word,
(04:00):
the automatic recognition ofwords and phrases, that is the
key stone of fluency.
But we always start withaccuracy.
We've in rate, which thenbecomes that marriage of
automaticity and eventually wepay attention to expression and
(04:21):
prosody.
It's not irrelevant, but it'sthose first two things.
It's the accuracy andautomaticity.
And, as you said, the best wayfor us to measure automaticity
is correct per minute.
We can do that.
You mentioned words correct perminute, which is typically the
oral reading fluency or ORFcurriculum-based measure that
(04:43):
we're using in many differentforms.
Lots of different commercialproducts these days measure ORF,
but ORF is when you administerORF.
The outcome, the metric isyou're measuring words correct
per minute.
But for our emerging readers wecan use an automaticity measure
of letter name fluency, lettersound fluency, which I and many
(05:09):
others wished we had namedletter naming automaticity,
letter sound automaticitynonsense, word automaticity, so
that we're real, clear and realaccurate, and in fact we could
say oral reading automaticity orsomething like that, a better
name than oral reading fluency,because fluency really does
(05:32):
include that prosody andexpression.
And that's another confusingthing.
Like we're measuring fluencybut you said fluency has prosody
and yeah, so let's just thinkof words correct per minute as
automaticity.
It's the centerpiece, it's whatmakes fluency important,
because once automaticity isachieved at that letter, sound,
(05:56):
word, phrase, text level, whenthat's achieved and we pay
attention, of course, to the topof Scarborough's rope and we
know what those words mean andwe understand the syntax and
semantics and we can use ourinferencing skills and our
background knowledge, we havecomprehension and the key to
(06:18):
that is that automaticity piece.
Melissa (06:21):
Jan, can I follow up with what you just mentioned
there?
I actually saw I know we talkedabout this the last time you
were on too, but I saw someconfusion online where people
were saying about the ORF andthe comprehension and that link
between them and some peoplewere confused by they were
saying, well, is it a measure ofcomprehension itself?
(06:42):
And I think you and I wouldboth say no, it's not.
But can you explain that alittle bit for our listeners?
Jan Hasbrouck (06:48):
Sure, I'll try.
We've got a couple hours rightTo talk about that.
Yes, I have been so measuringcomprehension, let's just start
there.
I have been very influenced bymy many of my very brave
colleagues I think all of mycolleagues in the field as
reading researchers who take oncomprehension.
(07:11):
I put them all on pedestalsLike really I stayed with
fluency, this narrowly defined,complex but nothing like
comprehension.
So I'm particularly influencedby the work of Hugh Katz who has
(07:32):
, so to me, clearly articulateda couple of things.
One is that comprehensionexists.
It's really important, it'sessential, it's the whole
purpose of reading in many ways.
But the second point he makesto teachers all the time is that
it's incredibly hard to measure.
(07:53):
And it's incredibly hard tomeasure because it is so complex
and multifaceted he talks about.
Every reader has multiplestrengths and weaknesses in
comprehension because ofmultiple factors attention,
background, knowledge, interest,all kinds of things.
So he even in a seminar and Iquote him all the time kind of
(08:18):
waggling his fingers at teachers.
They say stop trying to measurecomprehension as if it's a
single thing, stop, stop that.
But then he doesn't say so, youcan't even try.
He says there are other waysthat you can get at the
underlying components ofcomprehension and he made a
little bulleted list in theseminar that I'm thinking about.
(08:38):
The first thing on that listwas words correct per minute.
Here's from Hugh Katz, one ofthe world's experts in
comprehension, saying the bestthing you can do in a classroom
to get a peek at a student'scomprehension is measure words
correct per minute.
It's not the only thing on thislist and it never should be,
but what we know and I wouldjust look this up the other day
(08:59):
because I got an email fromsomebody basically asking me
that same question my colleaguesare saying well, actually it
was a little bit different.
She had attended a webinarwhere somebody said you should
stop using oral reading fluencywords correct for a minute
because it doesn't tell youanything about comprehension.
Interesting, yeah, no that isabsolutely not true.
Melissa (09:22):
I mean.
Lori (09:23):
This is why there's so many, so much confusion in the
field.
There's so many ways to getinformation and, honestly,
teachers don't have the accessto the research portals, nor the
time, and it's very you know,it's hard to read, to be honest.
Jan Hasbrouck (09:35):
Right.
And then they go on a webinarand people are saying the
opposite of what some otherexpert is saying.
So I sent her a couple ofarticles One, I think quite
recently 2022, that looked atthird graders Once again.
I mean, people keep studyingWords Correct Per Minute, I
think, in part because it's youknow, it's just such, as I have
(09:57):
said, a weird little assessmentthat we can really get anything
out of a 60second cold read froma kid.
So people keep studying it like, come on, really, this can't be
true.
So this study was 2022, lookingat third graders and comparing
the third grade to the outcome.
(10:17):
That one of the outcomes wewould measure comprehension was
as a state assessment.
So the state assessment ofthird grade, which is, you know,
all the state assessments, areessentially reading
comprehension tests, and theseresearchers said we need to keep
doing this because those statetests keep changing.
So what we think of ascomprehension in a practical
(10:38):
arena, like a state test, keepschanging.
So does ORF continue to predict, not measure?
So now I've come back toanswering your question.
No, orf does not measurecomprehension, but it remains
one of the best indicators ofcomprehension.
Far from perfect.
(10:58):
Everybody who works withmultilingual learners knows that
we can do a really good job ofgetting kids to decode with
automaticity.
But they may not becomprehenders and that's not
going to show up in a wordcorrect per minute assessment.
But we know that we'reprofessionals.
We can look at that.
But when these researchers sayand there was a quote something
(11:22):
like over the last four decades,nothing has surpassed oral
reading fluency in the abilityto predict with reasonable
accuracy students' likelycomprehension, and it takes a
minute, that's the tradeoff.
(11:42):
You want to measurecomprehension?
You can go find a schoolpsychologist or a cognitive
psychologist or maybe a lot ofspecial educators who can truly
measure the best we can, thekind of stuff that Hugh Katz is
saying Real comprehension,multifaceted, multiple hours.
You have all kinds of differentways of getting at
(12:03):
comprehension.
We can do that.
But no classroom teacher shoulddo that or has.
That's not where we should bespending our time.
So instead, let's measure.
Let's do a one minute measureand get a pretty good idea of
where kids are as an indicator.
So yeah, I stand solidly withthe people who think it's a
(12:27):
strange test.
I do, I get it.
I cannot wrap my head.
I still have some issues withthat part of it, but I've looked
at the research, I've done theresearch.
I use it all the time and again.
Not just the text, I use it allthe time and again.
(13:01):
Not just the text, oral readingfluency, but the letter naming
sound.
The letter sound fluency.
Letter naming fluency nonsense.
Word fluency differentiateskids real fast to say you're on
track.
You're going to need a littleor a lot of help to get on track
.
You can get on track.
So any of thoseautomaticity-based measures do
tell us a lot.
Melissa (13:09):
Yeah, and it sounds like some students would benefit
from those other assessmentsyou're talking about with
comprehension, specifically Likeif you're seeing that there's
something going on here that youneed to dig deeper and find out
more.
But for a classroom full ofstudents, this is a really the
oral reading, fluency and allthe other fluency assessments
are great places to start to geta picture.
Jan Hasbrouck (13:31):
Yes, the screening that we do with all
the kids and differentiate thosewe we're sure they're fine,
they're likely fine, they mightnot be fine and deeply at risk.
We can do that.
Classroom teachers can do thatquite efficiently.
Lori (13:52):
And then, yeah, then we turn to our colleagues, our
specialists, to dig deeper asneeded.
I find that so reassuring thatthese quick tests can tell us so
much, because I feel like it'snot just quick but it's also
frequent.
We're not giving it, like youknow, once at the beginning of
the year, you know once at theend of the year, right?
We're giving it throughout theyear to measure progress on a
(14:13):
regular basis.
I'm not saying you know, everyweek, but we would be giving it
semi-regularly to get an idea ofyou know, hearing a student
read for a minute in September,hearing a student read for a
minute in November, hearing astudent read for a minute in
January, and just reallytracking that progress over time
.
I know the letter naming onesdepending on the student, might
(14:33):
be a little bit more frequent,right, depending on their needs
and where they fall within thoseassessment categories.
I should say so.
I'm just curious if you wantedto react to that at all, jan.
I should say so.
I'm just curious if you wantedto react to that at all, jan.
Jan Hasbrouck (14:45):
Well, even the oral reading fluency can in fact
be given more frequently whenwe change its use, the category
of assessment to progressmonitoring, from benchmark
screening.
We can use all of thoseautomaticity measures for that
(15:10):
purpose and some of them top outlike you're sort of saying that
like letter naming fluency.
We don't use that with thirdgraders because it's that
predictive power.
And even oral reading fluencywe know that it loses its
predictive power as an indicatorwhen students are reading at
about the fifth grade level,which may mean we can use it in
middle school and high school ifthose kids are, as many of them
(15:33):
are stuck reading around thethird or fourth grade level.
It still is a very reasonableindicator.
So we can use them morefrequently.
But you're right, we can usethem frequently, in part because
it's easy to create multiplemeasures.
We don't have to take the samepassage and read it five
different times across the year.
We can use various forms andthe efficiency, how quickly we
(15:58):
can administer it.
And another thing that we canlook at it's often I know
Stephanie Stoller and a lot ofpeople that are really into the
MTSS world remind us that thoseassessments, looked at more
broadly, can also help withprogram evaluation, not just
(16:19):
individual student decisions.
But if we look at how are allthe second graders doing in this
school from fall winter, spring, we can make some really
important decisions about theeffectiveness of tier one and
use our resources wisely thatway, so that incredible data has
(16:45):
many uses.
Not to measure comprehensiondoesn't do that, but it can help
evaluate programs and it cangive us an indicator of risk.
Melissa (16:58):
Great, and you answered another question.
I hear a lot, which is whythere are not high school Hasbro
and Tyndall tables for fluency.
So thank you for bringing thatup.
We don't really need them.
Jan Hasbrouck (17:09):
We don't really need them.
Other researchers Tim Rosinskihas done some work with this.
Other people have too, but ifyou look at, this is an article
I need to write to reallyclarify this for people.
But if you look at our last twostudies 2017, Hasbrook Tyndall,
2017 and 2006, where 2006, wedid go up through eighth grade,
(17:35):
but right around fifth grade,you see at the 50th percentile,
a leveling off at about 150,which is words correct per
minute, which is exactly whatRosinski found when he went up
and looked at high school andeven proficient college readers.
Somewhere around 150 to 200 iswhere automaticity levels off,
(17:57):
which makes sense.
We don't get faster and fasterand faster and faster as we age.
What proficient readers do isthey're able to maintain that
level of automaticity eventhough the text is getting
harder.
That's what's changing Betweeneighth grade and 10th grade.
We hope that the text issignificantly harder, but the
(18:19):
kids who are proficient readersor advanced readers can maintain
a level of fluency, and we alsoknow that level of fluency
around 150 to 200 mirrors spokenlanguage, which is really
important because the wholepurpose of all of this is
comprehension.
So if we read faster than ourbrain can understand, it doesn't
(18:43):
do us any good than our braincan understand.
It doesn't do us any good.
That's why slow automaticity orweak automaticity is really a
problem, because it's too slowfor our brain to comprehend.
We want to get up to a level ofautomaticity which mirrors
spoken language, because spokenlanguage is what our brain
comprehends.
So there's no point except, youknow, skimming and scanning, I
(19:06):
guess studying for trying to getto the end of a novel or
something like that.
But that's a whole differentkind of reading.
For most reading, where wereally do want to comprehend
what we've read, getting up tothat range is good enough and we
don't expect or want kids toget faster and faster.
So if you have high schoolstudents who are not reading at
(19:29):
grade level, you can give themgrade level passage.
If they're not somewhere around150, then you have found a
child who needs some extraattention and intervention,
found a child who needs someextra attention and intervention
, and then that kicks in a wholeother set of assessment types.
Melissa (19:51):
Yeah, that's so helpful and I think it brings us around
to something you wanted to chatwith us about today, which was
this other study that was allabout NAEP scores with fourth
graders, and you actually foundsomething in that study that
made you rethink some of thethings you were thinking about
fluency.
And I have to tell you Jan,from my seat and probably from
(20:13):
teachers, to hear that, like JanHasbrook was rethinking
something, she thought aboutfluency, which is her thing.
I love that mindset of, justlike you know, there's research
and I'm rereading it and I'mchanging my thinking if there's
research that says somethingdifferent than what I was saying
.
So anyway, I'm going to pass itover to you to talk to us all
about that and what you saw inthis study.
Jan Hasbrouck (20:36):
All right, Well, thank you, melissa.
That makes me feel veryencouraged, because I do feel a
little bit of mea culpa on thisone, because I was pretty sure
of myself and have been al whodid what I thought was Think.
Still Think was a reallybrilliant study and very, very
(21:11):
helpful to those of us whounderstand the importance of
fluency and automaticityparticularly, and what we should
be doing about it in theclassroom.
So that study came out 2021.
It was published.
It was an IES grant fundedproject where, yes, they looked,
they went back and looked at2018 NAEP scores, which is part
(21:35):
of the excellence, I think, ofthis because it's pre-COVID, so
we don't have to worry about youknow COVID stuff.
These were kids their schoolcareer out.
You know COVID stuff.
These were kids their schoolcareer, fourth graders who had
been untouched by the pandemicand what the NAEP does.
The NAEP is.
We talked about comprehensionassessments.
The NAEP is a widely accepted,fairly rigorous assessment of
(22:00):
reading comprehension.
Students read passages andanswer multiple choice questions
and their performance is thenis categorized as advanced or
proficient, or basic or belowbasic, where proficient really
means solidly at grade levelgenerally that teacher talk, but
(22:24):
solidly at grade level, yougive them pretty much any grade
level material.
They're likely to be able tocomprehend it.
Basic means they can understandit at a basic level.
Advanced are those kids we allknow you can give them anything
above grade level, they arereally advanced comprehenders.
(22:44):
And then the basic and thenbelow basic.
They even have below basic highand below basic medium and
below basic low, because there'sa bunch of kids down there so
they differentiate them too.
But what these researchers didthat was so, I think, so helpful
certainly helpful to me ingiving guidance to people in the
(23:05):
field was they went back andlooked at the students.
They had access to thesestudents' words correct per
minute, oral reading fluencyfrom their schools had done that
tracking.
So they went back andcorrelated those things and
found very clear categories ofautomaticity, proficiency, words
(23:27):
correct per minute, performancefor those advanced readers, the
proficient, the basic and belowbasic.
And now, really for the firsttime, we had numbers.
Up until that study I hadtheorized like based on my
experience and based on my workwith kids, that I knew from
(23:49):
experience really, and therewere some studies that showed
the 50th percentile was reallykind of the floor you had to be
there, but I had then for yearsbeen saying it's the 75th
percentile which is really.
There's just no evidence thatgetting above that 75th
percentile has any benefits.
So that's the range you want toaim for as instruction.
(24:10):
And when I first read that studyand I just reread it again they
do cite my work Hasbrook andTyndall norms.
They say this aligns very muchwith the work of Hasbrook and
Tyndall and all of that made meso excited.
I must have blinked for amoment.
And because I misinterpretedthe correlation that they did I
(24:34):
thought they were looking at theend of the year, hasbro
contendal norms because I madean assumption.
Someday I'm going to learn,really, really learn, to stop
making assumptions.
But I read over the part thatsaid I assume NAEP was
administered at the end of theyear and that's where I got.
(24:55):
I think I got so excited.
I just sort of skipped that partbecause it says very clearly in
the article that NAEP thesewere scores from the middle of
the year.
So I was going around because Iread a little too fast and I
was saying look how these scoresalign almost perfectly with the
(25:17):
70 that the advanced studentswere reading right around 160.
That was their average.
They reported that in thearticle.
The proficient students werereading around one at.
In general they didn't sayabout that was their average of
the advanced readers were 160words correct per minute and
(25:39):
that aligns exactly with theHasbro and Tindall end of year
75th percentile.
So I thought there you go.
This proves that what I've beensaying was right all along.
And I said that, for I've beensaying that in lots of webinars
for quite a while.
I said it in one of yourpodcasts, I've written about it.
(26:00):
It's in a book that I wrote.
I got to get that changedBecause somebody very kindly
reached out to me privately, notdoing it on social media, but
said I think I heard you say onMelissa and Lori Love Literacy
that it's the 75th percentilethat aligns with advanced
(26:21):
readers and I don't think that'scorrect.
Like well, you're wrong, ofcourse, I thought.
And then I went back and readthe article and was like oh dear
, oh dear.
Like oh dear, oh dear, yeah,that's correct.
I was wrong because I wassimply comparing their very
clear scores 160 for advanced,142 for proficient, 123 for
(26:46):
basic and then 108 and lower forbelow basic and those did align
so clearly with our end of yeargoals.
But they, those researchers,white et al compared them to the
Hasbro and Tyndall middle ofthe year goals and they do align
.
But we have to change ouralignment a little bit because
(27:09):
the 160 aligns more closely tothe 90th percentile.
Our middle of the year 90thpercentile is 168.
And when you understandconfidence intervals that puts
that at the low end.
So it's not that those advancedrears were actually at the 90th
(27:30):
percentile, but they werecertainly above the 75th
percentile.
So the high end of value toautomaticity that's the way I
want to talk about it, thatthere is value to automaticity
and we know the numbers.
Now you have to be somewherearound the 50th percentile,
(27:54):
which on the Hasbro ContinentalNorms that changes up until
about fifth grade.
But it's that for grade levelreading you have to be minimally
in the vicinity of the 50thpercentile.
But there does appear to beadvantage to getting close to
the 90th percentile in thatrange, certainly slightly above
(28:16):
the 75th.
Our middle of the year 75th perfourth grade was 143.
And they're finding for theproficient that very good, but
not superb, not advanced.
So very good readers,proficient comprehenders, on the
NAEP were exactly, essentiallyat our 75th percentile.
(28:40):
So there are some readers whocan read a little bit faster,
not faster than speech, you know, but faster, and there may be
for those readers some advantageto a little bit higher
automaticity.
But all the people, my caution,the but, is that we don't.
(29:03):
I'm going to slow down myspeech here because I really
want to make a point.
We don't want any teacher tointerpret that that the key to
advanced comprehension is fastreading.
That is not the correctinterpretation of that.
Automaticity is a key point.
If you get at the 75thpercentile, which is really
(29:26):
really strong automaticity, andyou have all the stuff at the
top of Scarborough's rope, youneed all of that.
You have all the stuff at thetop of Scarborough's rope, you
need all of that Then you canhave proficient, which is really
good, really really goodcomprehension.
Some students are going toperhaps get to the advanced.
And is that?
(29:47):
Are they advanced becausethey're such good readers
already and that is representedin automatism?
We really don't know.
But there is zero evidence thatjust getting kids to read
faster is going to make thembetter comprehenders.
This is not about fast reading.
I'm so glad we started with theterm automaticity.
(30:11):
First of all.
Automaticity has accuracy inthere and we can't sacrifice
that.
But I have changed all mydiscussion to pointing out this
wonderful study.
White et al 2021, aligns withthe middle of the year fourth
grade norms for Hasbrook andTyndall and changes our
(30:34):
recommendations just a littlebit that makes sense, and I'm
thinking about when we talkedabout this the first time.
Melissa (30:40):
I think one thing I brought up was that you know,
just normally in a school or ina classroom, you know our
thought is that we want to getto 100 percent right on any
assessment.
That seems to like why wouldthat not be our goal?
So it sounds like the ideabehind it is still the same,
right?
Is that like we don'tnecessarily need to get to 100%?
75% is still strong, but itmight be a little higher than we
(31:06):
thought.
Jan Hasbrouck (31:07):
A little bit higher.
Yes, so in our norms we choseto only put them in those chunks
of percentiles.
We do have the whole percentilelayout from 99 on down, but we
don't share those.
I mean that's not what wepublished, in part because that
(31:31):
implies some precision, in partbecause that implies some
precision and teachers get hungup on oh he's at the 77th but I
want him at the 78th, likethere's no functional difference
between really those categories.
That's why we said 50th is acategory and we provide one
(31:52):
number.
But there's good research ofassessment people who say that
number is not the real number.
There's always a confidenceinterval around that number
(32:16):
grade.
That number is a range of plus10 and minus 10 around the 50th
percentile.
So when you think about that,the 50th percentile, I mean the
90th percentile, plus and minus10 is 168, minus 10 is 158.
And that would be statisticallywithin the range of what those
advanced students performed onthe White et al study.
(32:38):
But it's a range and it's notprecise.
And yes, although this studychanged my thinking, informed my
thinking that there is someadvantage of a little bit higher
, you don't have to even get toofficially the 90th percentile.
So it remains no evidence thatjust keep pushing, pushing,
(32:59):
pushing has any benefit.
And then keep thinking aboutthe whole purpose of all this.
It's not that number on thepage where it's correct per
minute.
It's about comprehension.
So these are indicators ofcomprehension.
We want our students to beproficient comprehenders.
Some of them might get tooadvanced, but automaticity, not
(33:21):
speed, is what we're aiming for.
And then all the components ofScarborough's rope need to be
all woven in there too.
Melissa (33:29):
Yeah, and can we talk about that speed for a second,
because I know we talked aboutthat last time as well, but just
to bring it back around.
So there are still we want towatch out for that still of
students who are reading toofast, right?
My middle schoolers were justlike this even if I told them
not to try to reach for that100% number, they still like.
They're like I want to getthere right, and they're trying
to read as fast as they can.
(33:50):
So can you talk a little bitabout like how that can that can
be a problem if we're pushingstudents or if students are
pushing themselves to try to getto that highest number?
Lori (34:03):
Yeah, they're going to try for that Of course.
Jan Hasbrouck (34:05):
I mean, we've told them since the day they
walked into kindergarten.
You know that, you know ahundred is the one you're going
for.
So, and faster is always better, and, you know, or higher is
always better.
They've internalized that, anda lot of teachers have too.
I have tried to get people torethink this and recalibrate it
(34:28):
from traditional ways ofmeasuring academic performance
and thinking more of indicatorsof things like health and
wellness, where somewhere aroundaverage is always perfect for
an indicator.
You want your blood pressure tobe average, you want your
(34:51):
cholesterol level to be average,you want your body temperature
to be average.
Those are wonderful, and whenwe think of oral reading,
fluency as a measure, average oryou know, slightly, slightly
above now, 50th percentile, butin that range is is optimal, not
faster and faster.
(35:12):
So yeah, if we could convinceour students to do that I'm
going to cut your middle schoolstudents a little slack, though,
because they're doing whatthey've essentially been taught
to do, and if they do that juston an assessment, and especially
if they're maintaining theiraccuracy, then okay.
Melissa (35:37):
Which they weren't, always they were showing off.
Jan Hasbrouck (35:40):
But when they then turn to their social
studies book or the novel thatthey're reading or whatever, and
they instead read that forcomprehension, for understanding
if they know how to turn offthat speed racing, I would
prefer that they do it duringassessment as well.
But I get it and thinking ofthat, that's another piece of
(36:03):
feedback you could give them.
If they're sacrificing theiraccuracy for speed.
You could give them theiraccuracy score and saying this
is not acceptable.
If you're not at least at 95%,you have to do it again.
So even though you got to 227words correct per minute, your
accuracy was 87 or whatever.
(36:26):
That's not acceptable becausethat's the most important score
overall for comprehension.
We don't usually take the timeto measure that because it's
woven into the words correct perminute score.
But if I were trying to break abad habit I might say both of
those count.
(36:46):
Both of those things count.
Lori (36:49):
Yeah, I love thinking about that and informing
especially our older readers,who can really understand that
and put some focus there,because I think they think that
you know the more they read, thebetter and they're going to be
good comprehenders, no matterwhat, but really actually
showing them when you read thatword wrong, you're not
comprehending and that's areally big factor contributing
(37:12):
to you not understanding whatyou're reading.
And even one word reallymatters.
And older kids, every wordmatters, yeah, and older kids, I
think, get that.
Jan Hasbrouck (37:21):
There's an article that I quote a lot in my
workshops that where thesepeople found these, as little as
2% of the words will affectcomprehension.
So that's saying that we shouldaim for 98%.
(37:43):
I think a lot of the researchthat I've read on accuracy says
95 is I mean, and there's not awhole lot of difference between
95 and 98, but I like doing insome of my fluency workshops
giving my audience of advancedor proficient readers I have to
(38:04):
believe a piece of text from amedical journal in which it is
really about 5% of the words arewords that are simply
unfamiliar to us.
Now, as proficient readers,most people, I I think, can
decode those six seven-syllablewords.
They can read them, but theydon't know what they mean.
And even 5% all the other wordsare very familiar words but
(38:29):
nobody knows what that shortparagraph means.
You need to know almost all thewords and not just decode them
correctly but know what theymean in order to comprehend.
So that's part of accuracy too.
We measure it just in did yousay that word correctly?
But for true comprehension it'snot just recognizing or it's
(38:54):
knowing the word or being ableto figure it out.
Lori (38:57):
Yeah, can we talk a little bit more about that?
I would love to think about theother factors involved, right,
like motivation, like backgroundknowledge, like vocabulary that
you just mentioned.
Can you share a little bit moreabout how those play into
comprehension, because it's socomplex?
Jan Hasbrouck (39:14):
It is complex.
And right away I'm going to sayI said before I am not a
comprehension researcher.
I'm far too much of a coward,too lazy, too much of a coward
to try to research that stuffabout.
I do think is representedbeautifully perhaps not
(39:46):
perfectly, but beautifully againin Scarborough's Rope.
That top of the rope, all thatlanguage stuff.
We say students need languageto comprehend.
But she has so nicelydelineated that that includes
background knowledge and sheseparates that from vocabulary.
So you need that generalknowledge but you also need
(40:08):
knowledge of words and what theymean.
Those language structures we'vegot a lot of students, and not
just our multilingual learners,but they're far separated from
the academic structure of syntaxand semantics that is required
(40:45):
for reading comprehension intheir classrooms.
And then her rope.
I'm looking down at it because Ihave not memorized all these
strands but verbal reasoning,the ability to inference and
understand what a metaphor is,which is all through.
You know we start that stuff inkindergarten.
(41:07):
The dog was as big as a house.
Okay, is that true?
Is that a metaphor?
What does that mean?
And then her last strand isthose literacy concepts, print
concepts and all the genres.
I mean you read Tim Shanahanand Cindy Shanahan and others do
(41:27):
such a good job of that.
Talking about the cognitivedemands that are different when
you're reading different typesof texts that are meant for
different things.
Narrative is very differentthan content materials.
We read science textsdifferently than we read poetry.
And knowing how to do that andgetting the brains trained with
(41:52):
experience to do those thingsyeah, it's super, super complex
and we need to be thinking aboutthose things.
When the outcome is skilledreading, comprehension,
motivation we can always hopefor all of those things, but all
(42:12):
of those pieces and includingit's not just our multilingual
learners that we need to belooking for the possibility for
some additional targetedinstruction or intervention to
strengthen all of those strands.
Lori (42:30):
Thank you, that's so helpful.
I love, too, that you look atthe rope.
I have it printed out and alsolook at it.
I don't have it memorized.
So thank you for being so realin saying that.
Jan Hasbrouck (42:42):
Well, I do the same thing for the Hasbrook and
Tyndall norms too.
Lori (42:45):
I have laminated.
I had it pulled up when we'retalking about it Generally.
Melissa (42:48):
I kind of know that is great If Jan Hasbrook has the.
Lori (42:51):
Hasbrook and Tyndall norms printed out.
I mean, I can't imaginememorizing all those numbers.
I we actually I did link it inthe show notes, so it's in the
show notes for everyone, in caseyou're looking for it.
The research that Jan wastalking about earlier as as well
, by White et al.
So it's all in the show notes.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Melissa (43:10):
Jan, I had one last question for you that we did not
talk about but I actually todaywas um.
I saw another one of those kindof debates online and it was
basically talking about repeatedreading for fluency and the
benefit of that, and some peoplewere, you know, citing some
evidence like we have had on ourpodcast.
Chase Young came on and he saidthere is research that shows a
(43:32):
benefit for repeated readingsand that will even help on other
texts.
Right, it's not just limited tothat text that they're reading
repeatedly, but that willbenefit them when they read
other texts.
Other people were saying thatthey're just memorizing the
words there.
That's not actually reallyhelpful for fluency.
And the road they were goingdown was more of what we also
(43:54):
had on the podcast and totallyrespect is Marianne Wolfe and
she was talking about the possumapproach and how you know you
want to talk about the meaningsof words and syntax and
semantics and all the differentparts so that they really get it
In my brain.
I kind of thought if there'sresearch that supports both of
these things that helps studentswith fluency, wouldn't we do
(44:14):
both of them?
I don't know why we have toalways like put them against
each other and say pick one orthe other.
But I was just curious if youhad any thoughts on that,
because people were really, youknow, picking a side on that and
I was just curious what youthought.
Jan Hasbrouck (44:29):
Well, another person we could put in sort of
on Marianne's side would beFreddie Hebert side would be
Freddie Hebert, who's done somestellar research and makes a
really compelling argument forwhat I believe the term she uses
the term I'm familiar with iswide reading instead of just
(44:50):
repeated reading, which impliesyou take a piece of text and you
read it multiple times.
She's showing how wide readingdifferent passages, but she does
make the argument that it'sespecially beneficial if those
different passages actually havea lot of overlap in the same
word.
So they really gives anopportunity for those multiple
(45:12):
exposures that can lead toorthographic mapping.
And so then we pick myunderstanding of her work, you
would pick carefully what thoserepeated words are, because
those are the words we want tobe orthographically mapped.
There are some words that wejust don't worry about them
being instantaneously recognized, whereas the high-frequency
(45:36):
words or frequently occurring orimportant meaning words, we
want those orthographicallymapped.
So wide reading has goodevidence from Freddie Hebert and
others.
Others have studied that aswell, but there is quite decades
of research on the value ofrepeated reading.
(45:59):
So both and yeah, I think therecould be different activities
and if you've got something likean intervention that I am very
familiar with, now called ReadLive, published by the Read
Naturally Company, was one ofthe first targeted reading
(46:22):
fluency interventions that Iever saw.
I saw it in the early 90s andstarted using it.
I actually did a study with itbecause I wanted to be sure it
looks like it should work, doesit?
And it did work.
It improved the student'sability to read text, not just
that one passage.
And the argument that kids arememorizing.
(46:43):
I would really challenge peopleto test that out, because what
I find is when students arereading and they really should
there's not a whole lot of value.
After about seven times of oneminute reads, practice over.
You take, after even seventimes, take that passage away
and I have seen a few kids whocan tell me the first two
(47:04):
sentences and then it all fallsapart.
Very few can even get to thefirst two sentences and so
they're not, they're not.
They're not.
They're not.
Unless they have a photographicmemory, they're not memorizing.
But what they are getting isrepeated exposure to, we hope,
important words.
They're getting confidence.
I find that kind of repeatedreading intervention and Read
(47:28):
Naturally does a cold read andthey use that for motivation.
You know their words correctper minute, which is not very
good, and then they read it witha narrator to build the
accuracy piece first, and thenthey do the automaticity with
repeated one minute read likethree to five to seven times and
then they read the whole thingagain.
(47:49):
And because it happens in ashort period of time, the
students can really feel like afew minutes ago I couldn't read
this and now I can read it andthere.
So there's motivation in there,there's practice with the feel
of reading fluencies following amodel, and I'm just mentioning
that because I'm very familiarwith it.
There are many others, severalothers anyway that follow, that
(48:12):
are based on repeated reading,that follow that basic structure
.
But that's not all you would do.
You would hope that these kidswould have access to reading
more widely and applying theirnewly tentative automaticity or
fluency skills, really payingattention to expression and
(48:33):
prosody and all of that as well,while always maintaining
accuracy.
So yeah, I don't think we needto say one works and the other
doesn't.
They are different approachesTo me.
I've not seen evidence to showoh, we used to think that worked
and now it doesn't.
I think we have evidence thatthey both work.
(48:56):
So use them both or use themappropriately at the really
early tentative stages, wherekids are real behind and they've
kind of given up, Somethinglike a real targeted repeated
reading can give them a littleboost of confidence along with
(49:16):
their skills, what I've seen,and so that's sort of you know,
depending on the child we pickthe right intervention.
But the evidence to me, I think, is reasonably strong for both
of those.
Melissa (49:27):
Yeah, and it makes sense.
I'm glad you brought up theorthographic mapping because
that in my brain theorthographic mapping is what
leads to automaticity.
Right.
Orthographic mapping is whatleads to automaticity.
Right Is when you'veorthographically mapped those
words, now you can read themautomatically and the repetition
can be really.
Some students need even morerepetition than others, so that
repeated reading can be reallyhelpful for that.
Jan Hasbrouck (49:48):
Yes, yes, the amount of repetition, practice
dosage is a term being usedthese days varies widely and
that is in fact.
There's a lot of discussion inthe special education world,
that around that word.
Dosage, that that's thedifferentiator, you know.
All things being equal, somekids already have it, some kids
(50:09):
get it with a little instruction, and almost everybody, that
whole figure of 95% of kids, canbe taught to read basically at
least by, you know, by the endof grade two.
Um, there's strong evidence,strong evidence, I think, that
that somewhere in that vicinitythat that's the number we can
(50:29):
achieve and it's everybodybenefits from instruction.
They basically all need the samestuff.
Look at at Scarborough's rope,all that has to be there.
But some kids already have allthose things.
They need their dosages, nonedosage of instruction.
Most kids in most classrooms,the average typical kid need the
average typical amount ofinstruction and some kids need
(50:52):
extraordinary, extraordinaryamounts of instruction 50, 75
repetitions, 80, 90 repetitions.
And we've got to figure out andwe can't do that in the regular
classroom, that's where Tier 2and Tier 3 comes in.
But yeah, the amount ofpractice, the amount of
repetition, the dosage, if youwill, is something we need to
(51:13):
figure out as a system thing weneed to figure out as a system.
Lori (51:17):
Not each teacher needs to figure that out but the system
needs to acknowledge thatdifference in children.
Yeah, I'm glad you said that.
I'm thinking too.
It's not necessarily in mybrain.
It wasn't like one versus theother, like repeated readings or
this multi-component approach.
It's really weaving them bothtogether, jan, from what you
(51:38):
just said, in a way that makessense for the students in front
of us.
Right, right.
Jan Hasbrouck (51:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
Lori (51:48):
So helpful.
Oh my gosh, I love thinkingabout this with you and we're so
grateful that you came on againto talk about fluency.
What a treat.
We were thrilled the first time.
We're even more thrilled thesecond time.
So thank you so much and thankyou for really being vulnerable
and sharing your new learningwith us and our listeners, and I
feel like we all can relate tohaving those oh no, better, do
(52:11):
better moments, and we're withyou.
Jan Hasbrouck (52:14):
Love that motto.
We need to embrace that mottono-transcript.
Lori (52:45):
I was like no, because we're always still learning,
Just like you said.
That's right, the researchkeeps coming.
Yeah, Keep it on.
Well, thank you so much, Dan.
We are so grateful to have youback and you know we're just
thrilled that you wanted to talkfluency again with us.
So thank you.
Jan Hasbrouck (53:03):
Thank you for the opportunity.
Melissa (53:05):
It was a delight To stay connected with us.
Sign up for our email list atliteracypodcastcom, Join our
Facebook group and follow us onInstagram and Twitter.
Lori (53:16):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (53:26):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds PBC or its employees, we appreciate you so much and
we're so glad you're here tolearn with us.
Do you have students who struggle to effortlessly and
accurately decode words?
Understanding how students canquickly recognize words without
effort is key to boostingreading fluency.
Melissa (00:13):
In today's episode, we'll talk to expert Jan
Hasbrook and she'll tell us whyautomaticity matters, how it
impacts comprehension and howyou can help your students build
this essential skill.
Lori (00:27):
Hi teacher friends.
I'm Lori and I'm Melissa.
We are two educators who wantthe best for all kids, and we
know you do too.
Melissa (00:37):
We worked together in Baltimore when the district
adopted a new literacycurriculum.
Lori (00:42):
We realized there was so much more to learn about how to
teach reading and writing.
Melissa (00:47):
Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.
Hi, jan, welcome back to thepodcast.
We're so excited to talk aboutfluency again with you today.
Jan Hasbrouck (01:01):
Never done talking about fluency.
There's always something to say.
Melissa (01:04):
We love talking about fluency.
It's nice something to say.
We love talking about fluency.
It's nice to be back, thank youfor the invitation.
Lori (01:09):
Of course, and it is one of our listeners' favorite
topics.
Everything on social media thatwe put about fluency just goes
crazy.
So we are really excited todayto really focus on automaticity,
which we know is a reallyimportant element of fluency.
So I'm hoping you can start usoff by sharing a little bit
about the relationship betweenwords correct per minute, which
(01:32):
our listeners might be familiarwith the acronym WCPM, and
automaticity in reading right?
So how do these impact youroverall reading fluency?
Jan Hasbrouck (01:43):
Well that we measure automaticity with WCPM.
There may be other ways ofmeasuring it.
There probably are.
But as practitioners in aclassroom that is the typical
way we measure automaticity andI think that's one of the
(02:03):
problems or challenges that theassessment people who understand
that WCPM is measuringautomaticity, that's not always
conveyed to teachers and itreally feels in many ways like
you're just measuring rate, likeyou're just measuring rate and
we often talk about rate or evenspeed as part of fluency.
(02:30):
The National Reading Panel didthat In their chapter on fluency
.
They kept talking about fluencyin slightly different ways, but
always the same threecomponents.
It's always accuracy, rate andexpression or prosody.
But there were some times inthe National Reading Panel where
(02:50):
they said fluency is theability to read quickly,
accurately and with goodexpression.
Thinking has evolved a littlebit and I've been assured by one
of the co-authors of thatchapter that reading quickly
(03:11):
would not be listed as thedefinitive component because
it's not the quickness, it isthe automaticity and
automaticity.
We prefer that term because itdoes include accuracy.
Accuracy you all know I'vepreached it so many times.
Accuracy is the foundation offluency.
That's where we start that wecannot sacrifice accuracy if
(03:36):
comprehension is our goal, whichit always is.
So once we have a foundation ofaccuracy and that can be at,
you know, just even at a letterlevel we're talking about.
This letter is M and now youknow it.
Now let's see if we canidentify it a little more
quickly.
And that quick identificationof a letter, a sound, a word,
(04:00):
the automatic recognition ofwords and phrases, that is the
key stone of fluency.
But we always start withaccuracy.
We've in rate, which thenbecomes that marriage of
automaticity and eventually wepay attention to expression and
(04:21):
prosody.
It's not irrelevant, but it'sthose first two things.
It's the accuracy andautomaticity.
And, as you said, the best wayfor us to measure automaticity
is correct per minute.
We can do that.
You mentioned words correct perminute, which is typically the
oral reading fluency or ORFcurriculum-based measure that
(04:43):
we're using in many differentforms.
Lots of different commercialproducts these days measure ORF,
but ORF is when you administerORF.
The outcome, the metric isyou're measuring words correct
per minute.
But for our emerging readers wecan use an automaticity measure
of letter name fluency, lettersound fluency, which I and many
(05:09):
others wished we had namedletter naming automaticity,
letter sound automaticitynonsense, word automaticity, so
that we're real, clear and realaccurate, and in fact we could
say oral reading automaticity orsomething like that, a better
name than oral reading fluency,because fluency really does
(05:32):
include that prosody andexpression.
And that's another confusingthing.
Like we're measuring fluencybut you said fluency has prosody
and yeah, so let's just thinkof words correct per minute as
automaticity.
It's the centerpiece, it's whatmakes fluency important,
because once automaticity isachieved at that letter, sound,
(05:56):
word, phrase, text level, whenthat's achieved and we pay
attention, of course, to the topof Scarborough's rope and we
know what those words mean andwe understand the syntax and
semantics and we can use ourinferencing skills and our
background knowledge, we havecomprehension and the key to
(06:18):
that is that automaticity piece.
Melissa (06:21):
Jan, can I follow up with what you just mentioned
there?
I actually saw I know we talkedabout this the last time you
were on too, but I saw someconfusion online where people
were saying about the ORF andthe comprehension and that link
between them and some peoplewere confused by they were
saying, well, is it a measure ofcomprehension itself?
(06:42):
And I think you and I wouldboth say no, it's not.
But can you explain that alittle bit for our listeners?
Jan Hasbrouck (06:48):
Sure, I'll try.
We've got a couple hours rightTo talk about that.
Yes, I have been so measuringcomprehension, let's just start
there.
I have been very influenced bymy many of my very brave
colleagues I think all of mycolleagues in the field as
reading researchers who take oncomprehension.
(07:11):
I put them all on pedestalsLike really I stayed with
fluency, this narrowly defined,complex but nothing like
comprehension.
So I'm particularly influencedby the work of Hugh Katz who has
(07:32):
, so to me, clearly articulateda couple of things.
One is that comprehensionexists.
It's really important, it'sessential, it's the whole
purpose of reading in many ways.
But the second point he makesto teachers all the time is that
it's incredibly hard to measure.
(07:53):
And it's incredibly hard tomeasure because it is so complex
and multifaceted he talks about.
Every reader has multiplestrengths and weaknesses in
comprehension because ofmultiple factors attention,
background, knowledge, interest,all kinds of things.
So he even in a seminar and Iquote him all the time kind of
(08:18):
waggling his fingers at teachers.
They say stop trying to measurecomprehension as if it's a
single thing, stop, stop that.
But then he doesn't say so, youcan't even try.
He says there are other waysthat you can get at the
underlying components ofcomprehension and he made a
little bulleted list in theseminar that I'm thinking about.
(08:38):
The first thing on that listwas words correct per minute.
Here's from Hugh Katz, one ofthe world's experts in
comprehension, saying the bestthing you can do in a classroom
to get a peek at a student'scomprehension is measure words
correct per minute.
It's not the only thing on thislist and it never should be,
but what we know and I wouldjust look this up the other day
(08:59):
because I got an email fromsomebody basically asking me
that same question my colleaguesare saying well, actually it
was a little bit different.
She had attended a webinarwhere somebody said you should
stop using oral reading fluencywords correct for a minute
because it doesn't tell youanything about comprehension.
Interesting, yeah, no that isabsolutely not true.
Melissa (09:22):
I mean.
Lori (09:23):
This is why there's so many, so much confusion in the
field.
There's so many ways to getinformation and, honestly,
teachers don't have the accessto the research portals, nor the
time, and it's very you know,it's hard to read, to be honest.
Jan Hasbrouck (09:35):
Right.
And then they go on a webinarand people are saying the
opposite of what some otherexpert is saying.
So I sent her a couple ofarticles One, I think quite
recently 2022, that looked atthird graders Once again.
I mean, people keep studyingWords Correct Per Minute, I
think, in part because it's youknow, it's just such, as I have
(09:57):
said, a weird little assessmentthat we can really get anything
out of a 60second cold read froma kid.
So people keep studying it like, come on, really, this can't be
true.
So this study was 2022, lookingat third graders and comparing
the third grade to the outcome.
(10:17):
That one of the outcomes wewould measure comprehension was
as a state assessment.
So the state assessment ofthird grade, which is, you know,
all the state assessments, areessentially reading
comprehension tests, and theseresearchers said we need to keep
doing this because those statetests keep changing.
So what we think of ascomprehension in a practical
(10:38):
arena, like a state test, keepschanging.
So does ORF continue to predict, not measure?
So now I've come back toanswering your question.
No, orf does not measurecomprehension, but it remains
one of the best indicators ofcomprehension.
Far from perfect.
(10:58):
Everybody who works withmultilingual learners knows that
we can do a really good job ofgetting kids to decode with
automaticity.
But they may not becomprehenders and that's not
going to show up in a wordcorrect per minute assessment.
But we know that we'reprofessionals.
We can look at that.
But when these researchers sayand there was a quote something
(11:22):
like over the last four decades,nothing has surpassed oral
reading fluency in the abilityto predict with reasonable
accuracy students' likelycomprehension, and it takes a
minute, that's the tradeoff.
(11:42):
You want to measurecomprehension?
You can go find a schoolpsychologist or a cognitive
psychologist or maybe a lot ofspecial educators who can truly
measure the best we can, thekind of stuff that Hugh Katz is
saying Real comprehension,multifaceted, multiple hours.
You have all kinds of differentways of getting at
(12:03):
comprehension.
We can do that.
But no classroom teacher shoulddo that or has.
That's not where we should bespending our time.
So instead, let's measure.
Let's do a one minute measureand get a pretty good idea of
where kids are as an indicator.
So yeah, I stand solidly withthe people who think it's a
(12:27):
strange test.
I do, I get it.
I cannot wrap my head.
I still have some issues withthat part of it, but I've looked
at the research, I've done theresearch.
I use it all the time and again.
Not just the text, I use it allthe time and again.
(13:01):
Not just the text, oral readingfluency, but the letter naming
sound.
The letter sound fluency.
Letter naming fluency nonsense.
Word fluency differentiateskids real fast to say you're on
track.
You're going to need a littleor a lot of help to get on track
.
You can get on track.
So any of thoseautomaticity-based measures do
tell us a lot.
Melissa (13:09):
Yeah, and it sounds like some students would benefit
from those other assessmentsyou're talking about with
comprehension, specifically Likeif you're seeing that there's
something going on here that youneed to dig deeper and find out
more.
But for a classroom full ofstudents, this is a really the
oral reading, fluency and allthe other fluency assessments
are great places to start to geta picture.
Jan Hasbrouck (13:31):
Yes, the screening that we do with all
the kids and differentiate thosewe we're sure they're fine,
they're likely fine, they mightnot be fine and deeply at risk.
We can do that.
Classroom teachers can do thatquite efficiently.
Lori (13:52):
And then, yeah, then we turn to our colleagues, our
specialists, to dig deeper asneeded.
I find that so reassuring thatthese quick tests can tell us so
much, because I feel like it'snot just quick but it's also
frequent.
We're not giving it, like youknow, once at the beginning of
the year, you know once at theend of the year, right?
We're giving it throughout theyear to measure progress on a
(14:13):
regular basis.
I'm not saying you know, everyweek, but we would be giving it
semi-regularly to get an idea ofyou know, hearing a student
read for a minute in September,hearing a student read for a
minute in November, hearing astudent read for a minute in
January, and just reallytracking that progress over time
.
I know the letter naming onesdepending on the student, might
(14:33):
be a little bit more frequent,right, depending on their needs
and where they fall within thoseassessment categories.
I should say so.
I'm just curious if you wantedto react to that at all, jan.
I should say so.
I'm just curious if you wantedto react to that at all, jan.
Jan Hasbrouck (14:45):
Well, even the oral reading fluency can in fact
be given more frequently whenwe change its use, the category
of assessment to progressmonitoring, from benchmark
screening.
We can use all of thoseautomaticity measures for that
(15:10):
purpose and some of them top outlike you're sort of saying that
like letter naming fluency.
We don't use that with thirdgraders because it's that
predictive power.
And even oral reading fluencywe know that it loses its
predictive power as an indicatorwhen students are reading at
about the fifth grade level,which may mean we can use it in
middle school and high school ifthose kids are, as many of them
(15:33):
are stuck reading around thethird or fourth grade level.
It still is a very reasonableindicator.
So we can use them morefrequently.
But you're right, we can usethem frequently, in part because
it's easy to create multiplemeasures.
We don't have to take the samepassage and read it five
different times across the year.
We can use various forms andthe efficiency, how quickly we
(15:58):
can administer it.
And another thing that we canlook at it's often I know
Stephanie Stoller and a lot ofpeople that are really into the
MTSS world remind us that thoseassessments, looked at more
broadly, can also help withprogram evaluation, not just
(16:19):
individual student decisions.
But if we look at how are allthe second graders doing in this
school from fall winter, spring, we can make some really
important decisions about theeffectiveness of tier one and
use our resources wisely thatway, so that incredible data has
(16:45):
many uses.
Not to measure comprehensiondoesn't do that, but it can help
evaluate programs and it cangive us an indicator of risk.
Melissa (16:58):
Great, and you answered another question.
I hear a lot, which is whythere are not high school Hasbro
and Tyndall tables for fluency.
So thank you for bringing thatup.
We don't really need them.
Jan Hasbrouck (17:09):
We don't really need them.
Other researchers Tim Rosinskihas done some work with this.
Other people have too, but ifyou look at, this is an article
I need to write to reallyclarify this for people.
But if you look at our last twostudies 2017, Hasbrook Tyndall,
2017 and 2006, where 2006, wedid go up through eighth grade,
(17:35):
but right around fifth grade,you see at the 50th percentile,
a leveling off at about 150,which is words correct per
minute, which is exactly whatRosinski found when he went up
and looked at high school andeven proficient college readers.
Somewhere around 150 to 200 iswhere automaticity levels off,
(17:57):
which makes sense.
We don't get faster and fasterand faster and faster as we age.
What proficient readers do isthey're able to maintain that
level of automaticity eventhough the text is getting
harder.
That's what's changing Betweeneighth grade and 10th grade.
We hope that the text issignificantly harder, but the
(18:19):
kids who are proficient readersor advanced readers can maintain
a level of fluency, and we alsoknow that level of fluency
around 150 to 200 mirrors spokenlanguage, which is really
important because the wholepurpose of all of this is
comprehension.
So if we read faster than ourbrain can understand, it doesn't
(18:43):
do us any good than our braincan understand.
It doesn't do us any good.
That's why slow automaticity orweak automaticity is really a
problem, because it's too slowfor our brain to comprehend.
We want to get up to a level ofautomaticity which mirrors
spoken language, because spokenlanguage is what our brain
comprehends.
So there's no point except, youknow, skimming and scanning, I
(19:06):
guess studying for trying to getto the end of a novel or
something like that.
But that's a whole differentkind of reading.
For most reading, where wereally do want to comprehend
what we've read, getting up tothat range is good enough and we
don't expect or want kids toget faster and faster.
So if you have high schoolstudents who are not reading at
(19:29):
grade level, you can give themgrade level passage.
If they're not somewhere around150, then you have found a
child who needs some extraattention and intervention,
found a child who needs someextra attention and intervention
, and then that kicks in a wholeother set of assessment types.
Melissa (19:51):
Yeah, that's so helpful and I think it brings us around
to something you wanted to chatwith us about today, which was
this other study that was allabout NAEP scores with fourth
graders, and you actually foundsomething in that study that
made you rethink some of thethings you were thinking about
fluency.
And I have to tell you Jan,from my seat and probably from
(20:13):
teachers, to hear that, like JanHasbrook was rethinking
something, she thought aboutfluency, which is her thing.
I love that mindset of, justlike you know, there's research
and I'm rereading it and I'mchanging my thinking if there's
research that says somethingdifferent than what I was saying
.
So anyway, I'm going to pass itover to you to talk to us all
about that and what you saw inthis study.
Jan Hasbrouck (20:36):
All right, Well, thank you, melissa.
That makes me feel veryencouraged, because I do feel a
little bit of mea culpa on thisone, because I was pretty sure
of myself and have been al whodid what I thought was Think.
Still Think was a reallybrilliant study and very, very
(21:11):
helpful to those of us whounderstand the importance of
fluency and automaticityparticularly, and what we should
be doing about it in theclassroom.
So that study came out 2021.
It was published.
It was an IES grant fundedproject where, yes, they looked,
they went back and looked at2018 NAEP scores, which is part
(21:35):
of the excellence, I think, ofthis because it's pre-COVID, so
we don't have to worry about youknow COVID stuff.
These were kids their schoolcareer out.
You know COVID stuff.
These were kids their schoolcareer, fourth graders who had
been untouched by the pandemicand what the NAEP does.
The NAEP is.
We talked about comprehensionassessments.
The NAEP is a widely accepted,fairly rigorous assessment of
(22:00):
reading comprehension.
Students read passages andanswer multiple choice questions
and their performance is thenis categorized as advanced or
proficient, or basic or belowbasic, where proficient really
means solidly at grade levelgenerally that teacher talk, but
(22:24):
solidly at grade level, yougive them pretty much any grade
level material.
They're likely to be able tocomprehend it.
Basic means they can understandit at a basic level.
Advanced are those kids we allknow you can give them anything
above grade level, they arereally advanced comprehenders.
(22:44):
And then the basic and thenbelow basic.
They even have below basic highand below basic medium and
below basic low, because there'sa bunch of kids down there so
they differentiate them too.
But what these researchers didthat was so, I think, so helpful
certainly helpful to me ingiving guidance to people in the
(23:05):
field was they went back andlooked at the students.
They had access to thesestudents' words correct per
minute, oral reading fluencyfrom their schools had done that
tracking.
So they went back andcorrelated those things and
found very clear categories ofautomaticity, proficiency, words
(23:27):
correct per minute, performancefor those advanced readers, the
proficient, the basic and belowbasic.
And now, really for the firsttime, we had numbers.
Up until that study I hadtheorized like based on my
experience and based on my workwith kids, that I knew from
(23:49):
experience really, and therewere some studies that showed
the 50th percentile was reallykind of the floor you had to be
there, but I had then for yearsbeen saying it's the 75th
percentile which is really.
There's just no evidence thatgetting above that 75th
percentile has any benefits.
So that's the range you want toaim for as instruction.
(24:10):
And when I first read that studyand I just reread it again they
do cite my work Hasbrook andTyndall norms.
They say this aligns very muchwith the work of Hasbrook and
Tyndall and all of that made meso excited.
I must have blinked for amoment.
And because I misinterpretedthe correlation that they did I
(24:34):
thought they were looking at theend of the year, hasbro
contendal norms because I madean assumption.
Someday I'm going to learn,really, really learn, to stop
making assumptions.
But I read over the part thatsaid I assume NAEP was
administered at the end of theyear and that's where I got.
(24:55):
I think I got so excited.
I just sort of skipped that partbecause it says very clearly in
the article that NAEP thesewere scores from the middle of
the year.
So I was going around because Iread a little too fast and I
was saying look how these scoresalign almost perfectly with the
(25:17):
70 that the advanced studentswere reading right around 160.
That was their average.
They reported that in thearticle.
The proficient students werereading around one at.
In general they didn't sayabout that was their average of
the advanced readers were 160words correct per minute and
(25:39):
that aligns exactly with theHasbro and Tindall end of year
75th percentile.
So I thought there you go.
This proves that what I've beensaying was right all along.
And I said that, for I've beensaying that in lots of webinars
for quite a while.
I said it in one of yourpodcasts, I've written about it.
(26:00):
It's in a book that I wrote.
I got to get that changedBecause somebody very kindly
reached out to me privately, notdoing it on social media, but
said I think I heard you say onMelissa and Lori Love Literacy
that it's the 75th percentilethat aligns with advanced
(26:21):
readers and I don't think that'scorrect.
Like well, you're wrong, ofcourse, I thought.
And then I went back and readthe article and was like oh dear
, oh dear.
Like oh dear, oh dear, yeah,that's correct.
I was wrong because I wassimply comparing their very
clear scores 160 for advanced,142 for proficient, 123 for
(26:46):
basic and then 108 and lower forbelow basic and those did align
so clearly with our end of yeargoals.
But they, those researchers,white et al compared them to the
Hasbro and Tyndall middle ofthe year goals and they do align
.
But we have to change ouralignment a little bit because
(27:09):
the 160 aligns more closely tothe 90th percentile.
Our middle of the year 90thpercentile is 168.
And when you understandconfidence intervals that puts
that at the low end.
So it's not that those advancedrears were actually at the 90th
(27:30):
percentile, but they werecertainly above the 75th
percentile.
So the high end of value toautomaticity that's the way I
want to talk about it, thatthere is value to automaticity
and we know the numbers.
Now you have to be somewherearound the 50th percentile,
(27:54):
which on the Hasbro ContinentalNorms that changes up until
about fifth grade.
But it's that for grade levelreading you have to be minimally
in the vicinity of the 50thpercentile.
But there does appear to beadvantage to getting close to
the 90th percentile in thatrange, certainly slightly above
(28:16):
the 75th.
Our middle of the year 75th perfourth grade was 143.
And they're finding for theproficient that very good, but
not superb, not advanced.
So very good readers,proficient comprehenders, on the
NAEP were exactly, essentiallyat our 75th percentile.
(28:40):
So there are some readers whocan read a little bit faster,
not faster than speech, you know, but faster, and there may be
for those readers some advantageto a little bit higher
automaticity.
But all the people, my caution,the but, is that we don't.
(29:03):
I'm going to slow down myspeech here because I really
want to make a point.
We don't want any teacher tointerpret that that the key to
advanced comprehension is fastreading.
That is not the correctinterpretation of that.
Automaticity is a key point.
If you get at the 75thpercentile, which is really
(29:26):
really strong automaticity, andyou have all the stuff at the
top of Scarborough's rope, youneed all of that.
You have all the stuff at thetop of Scarborough's rope, you
need all of that Then you canhave proficient, which is really
good, really really goodcomprehension.
Some students are going toperhaps get to the advanced.
And is that?
(29:47):
Are they advanced becausethey're such good readers
already and that is representedin automatism?
We really don't know.
But there is zero evidence thatjust getting kids to read
faster is going to make thembetter comprehenders.
This is not about fast reading.
I'm so glad we started with theterm automaticity.
(30:11):
First of all.
Automaticity has accuracy inthere and we can't sacrifice
that.
But I have changed all mydiscussion to pointing out this
wonderful study.
White et al 2021, aligns withthe middle of the year fourth
grade norms for Hasbrook andTyndall and changes our
(30:34):
recommendations just a littlebit that makes sense, and I'm
thinking about when we talkedabout this the first time.
Melissa (30:40):
I think one thing I brought up was that you know,
just normally in a school or ina classroom, you know our
thought is that we want to getto 100 percent right on any
assessment.
That seems to like why wouldthat not be our goal?
So it sounds like the ideabehind it is still the same,
right?
Is that like we don'tnecessarily need to get to 100%?
75% is still strong, but itmight be a little higher than we
(31:06):
thought.
Jan Hasbrouck (31:07):
A little bit higher.
Yes, so in our norms we choseto only put them in those chunks
of percentiles.
We do have the whole percentilelayout from 99 on down, but we
don't share those.
I mean that's not what wepublished, in part because that
(31:31):
implies some precision, in partbecause that implies some
precision and teachers get hungup on oh he's at the 77th but I
want him at the 78th, likethere's no functional difference
between really those categories.
That's why we said 50th is acategory and we provide one
(31:52):
number.
But there's good research ofassessment people who say that
number is not the real number.
There's always a confidenceinterval around that number
(32:16):
grade.
That number is a range of plus10 and minus 10 around the 50th
percentile.
So when you think about that,the 50th percentile, I mean the
90th percentile, plus and minus10 is 168, minus 10 is 158.
And that would be statisticallywithin the range of what those
advanced students performed onthe White et al study.
(32:38):
But it's a range and it's notprecise.
And yes, although this studychanged my thinking, informed my
thinking that there is someadvantage of a little bit higher
, you don't have to even get toofficially the 90th percentile.
So it remains no evidence thatjust keep pushing, pushing,
(32:59):
pushing has any benefit.
And then keep thinking aboutthe whole purpose of all this.
It's not that number on thepage where it's correct per
minute.
It's about comprehension.
So these are indicators ofcomprehension.
We want our students to beproficient comprehenders.
Some of them might get tooadvanced, but automaticity, not
(33:21):
speed, is what we're aiming for.
And then all the components ofScarborough's rope need to be
all woven in there too.
Melissa (33:29):
Yeah, and can we talk about that speed for a second,
because I know we talked aboutthat last time as well, but just
to bring it back around.
So there are still we want towatch out for that still of
students who are reading toofast, right?
My middle schoolers were justlike this even if I told them
not to try to reach for that100% number, they still like.
They're like I want to getthere right, and they're trying
to read as fast as they can.
(33:50):
So can you talk a little bitabout like how that can that can
be a problem if we're pushingstudents or if students are
pushing themselves to try to getto that highest number?
Lori (34:03):
Yeah, they're going to try for that Of course.
Jan Hasbrouck (34:05):
I mean, we've told them since the day they
walked into kindergarten.
You know that, you know ahundred is the one you're going
for.
So, and faster is always better, and, you know, or higher is
always better.
They've internalized that, anda lot of teachers have too.
I have tried to get people torethink this and recalibrate it
(34:28):
from traditional ways ofmeasuring academic performance
and thinking more of indicatorsof things like health and
wellness, where somewhere aroundaverage is always perfect for
an indicator.
You want your blood pressure tobe average, you want your
(34:51):
cholesterol level to be average,you want your body temperature
to be average.
Those are wonderful, and whenwe think of oral reading,
fluency as a measure, average oryou know, slightly, slightly
above now, 50th percentile, butin that range is is optimal, not
faster and faster.
(35:12):
So yeah, if we could convinceour students to do that I'm
going to cut your middle schoolstudents a little slack, though,
because they're doing whatthey've essentially been taught
to do, and if they do that juston an assessment, and especially
if they're maintaining theiraccuracy, then okay.
Melissa (35:37):
Which they weren't, always they were showing off.
Jan Hasbrouck (35:40):
But when they then turn to their social
studies book or the novel thatthey're reading or whatever, and
they instead read that forcomprehension, for understanding
if they know how to turn offthat speed racing, I would
prefer that they do it duringassessment as well.
But I get it and thinking ofthat, that's another piece of
(36:03):
feedback you could give them.
If they're sacrificing theiraccuracy for speed.
You could give them theiraccuracy score and saying this
is not acceptable.
If you're not at least at 95%,you have to do it again.
So even though you got to 227words correct per minute, your
accuracy was 87 or whatever.
(36:26):
That's not acceptable becausethat's the most important score
overall for comprehension.
We don't usually take the timeto measure that because it's
woven into the words correct perminute score.
But if I were trying to break abad habit I might say both of
those count.
(36:46):
Both of those things count.
Lori (36:49):
Yeah, I love thinking about that and informing
especially our older readers,who can really understand that
and put some focus there,because I think they think that
you know the more they read, thebetter and they're going to be
good comprehenders, no matterwhat, but really actually
showing them when you read thatword wrong, you're not
comprehending and that's areally big factor contributing
(37:12):
to you not understanding whatyou're reading.
And even one word reallymatters.
And older kids, every wordmatters, yeah, and older kids, I
think, get that.
Jan Hasbrouck (37:21):
There's an article that I quote a lot in my
workshops that where thesepeople found these, as little as
2% of the words will affectcomprehension.
So that's saying that we shouldaim for 98%.
(37:43):
I think a lot of the researchthat I've read on accuracy says
95 is I mean, and there's not awhole lot of difference between
95 and 98, but I like doing insome of my fluency workshops
giving my audience of advancedor proficient readers I have to
(38:04):
believe a piece of text from amedical journal in which it is
really about 5% of the words arewords that are simply
unfamiliar to us.
Now, as proficient readers,most people, I I think, can
decode those six seven-syllablewords.
They can read them, but theydon't know what they mean.
And even 5% all the other wordsare very familiar words but
(38:29):
nobody knows what that shortparagraph means.
You need to know almost all thewords and not just decode them
correctly but know what theymean in order to comprehend.
So that's part of accuracy too.
We measure it just in did yousay that word correctly?
But for true comprehension it'snot just recognizing or it's
(38:54):
knowing the word or being ableto figure it out.
Lori (38:57):
Yeah, can we talk a little bit more about that?
I would love to think about theother factors involved, right,
like motivation, like backgroundknowledge, like vocabulary that
you just mentioned.
Can you share a little bit moreabout how those play into
comprehension, because it's socomplex?
Jan Hasbrouck (39:14):
It is complex.
And right away I'm going to sayI said before I am not a
comprehension researcher.
I'm far too much of a coward,too lazy, too much of a coward
to try to research that stuffabout.
I do think is representedbeautifully perhaps not
(39:46):
perfectly, but beautifully againin Scarborough's Rope.
That top of the rope, all thatlanguage stuff.
We say students need languageto comprehend.
But she has so nicelydelineated that that includes
background knowledge and sheseparates that from vocabulary.
So you need that generalknowledge but you also need
(40:08):
knowledge of words and what theymean.
Those language structures we'vegot a lot of students, and not
just our multilingual learners,but they're far separated from
the academic structure of syntaxand semantics that is required
(40:45):
for reading comprehension intheir classrooms.
And then her rope.
I'm looking down at it because Ihave not memorized all these
strands but verbal reasoning,the ability to inference and
understand what a metaphor is,which is all through.
You know we start that stuff inkindergarten.
(41:07):
The dog was as big as a house.
Okay, is that true?
Is that a metaphor?
What does that mean?
And then her last strand isthose literacy concepts, print
concepts and all the genres.
I mean you read Tim Shanahanand Cindy Shanahan and others do
(41:27):
such a good job of that.
Talking about the cognitivedemands that are different when
you're reading different typesof texts that are meant for
different things.
Narrative is very differentthan content materials.
We read science textsdifferently than we read poetry.
And knowing how to do that andgetting the brains trained with
(41:52):
experience to do those thingsyeah, it's super, super complex
and we need to be thinking aboutthose things.
When the outcome is skilledreading, comprehension,
motivation we can always hopefor all of those things, but all
(42:12):
of those pieces and includingit's not just our multilingual
learners that we need to belooking for the possibility for
some additional targetedinstruction or intervention to
strengthen all of those strands.
Lori (42:30):
Thank you, that's so helpful.
I love, too, that you look atthe rope.
I have it printed out and alsolook at it.
I don't have it memorized.
So thank you for being so realin saying that.
Jan Hasbrouck (42:42):
Well, I do the same thing for the Hasbrook and
Tyndall norms too.
Lori (42:45):
I have laminated.
I had it pulled up when we'retalking about it Generally.
Melissa (42:48):
I kind of know that is great If Jan Hasbrook has the.
Lori (42:51):
Hasbrook and Tyndall norms printed out.
I mean, I can't imaginememorizing all those numbers.
I we actually I did link it inthe show notes, so it's in the
show notes for everyone, in caseyou're looking for it.
The research that Jan wastalking about earlier as as well
, by White et al.
So it's all in the show notes.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Melissa (43:10):
Jan, I had one last question for you that we did not
talk about but I actually todaywas um.
I saw another one of those kindof debates online and it was
basically talking about repeatedreading for fluency and the
benefit of that, and some peoplewere, you know, citing some
evidence like we have had on ourpodcast.
Chase Young came on and he saidthere is research that shows a
(43:32):
benefit for repeated readingsand that will even help on other
texts.
Right, it's not just limited tothat text that they're reading
repeatedly, but that willbenefit them when they read
other texts.
Other people were saying thatthey're just memorizing the
words there.
That's not actually reallyhelpful for fluency.
And the road they were goingdown was more of what we also
(43:54):
had on the podcast and totallyrespect is Marianne Wolfe and
she was talking about the possumapproach and how you know you
want to talk about the meaningsof words and syntax and
semantics and all the differentparts so that they really get it
In my brain.
I kind of thought if there'sresearch that supports both of
these things that helps studentswith fluency, wouldn't we do
(44:14):
both of them?
I don't know why we have toalways like put them against
each other and say pick one orthe other.
But I was just curious if youhad any thoughts on that,
because people were really, youknow, picking a side on that and
I was just curious what youthought.
Jan Hasbrouck (44:29):
Well, another person we could put in sort of
on Marianne's side would beFreddie Hebert side would be
Freddie Hebert, who's done somestellar research and makes a
really compelling argument forwhat I believe the term she uses
the term I'm familiar with iswide reading instead of just
(44:50):
repeated reading, which impliesyou take a piece of text and you
read it multiple times.
She's showing how wide readingdifferent passages, but she does
make the argument that it'sespecially beneficial if those
different passages actually havea lot of overlap in the same
word.
So they really gives anopportunity for those multiple
(45:12):
exposures that can lead toorthographic mapping.
And so then we pick myunderstanding of her work, you
would pick carefully what thoserepeated words are, because
those are the words we want tobe orthographically mapped.
There are some words that wejust don't worry about them
being instantaneously recognized, whereas the high-frequency
(45:36):
words or frequently occurring orimportant meaning words, we
want those orthographicallymapped.
So wide reading has goodevidence from Freddie Hebert and
others.
Others have studied that aswell, but there is quite decades
of research on the value ofrepeated reading.
(45:59):
So both and yeah, I think therecould be different activities
and if you've got something likean intervention that I am very
familiar with, now called ReadLive, published by the Read
Naturally Company, was one ofthe first targeted reading
(46:22):
fluency interventions that Iever saw.
I saw it in the early 90s andstarted using it.
I actually did a study with itbecause I wanted to be sure it
looks like it should work, doesit?
And it did work.
It improved the student'sability to read text, not just
that one passage.
And the argument that kids arememorizing.
(46:43):
I would really challenge peopleto test that out, because what
I find is when students arereading and they really should
there's not a whole lot of value.
After about seven times of oneminute reads, practice over.
You take, after even seventimes, take that passage away
and I have seen a few kids whocan tell me the first two
(47:04):
sentences and then it all fallsapart.
Very few can even get to thefirst two sentences and so
they're not, they're not.
They're not.
They're not.
Unless they have a photographicmemory, they're not memorizing.
But what they are getting isrepeated exposure to, we hope,
important words.
They're getting confidence.
I find that kind of repeatedreading intervention and Read
(47:28):
Naturally does a cold read andthey use that for motivation.
You know their words correctper minute, which is not very
good, and then they read it witha narrator to build the
accuracy piece first, and thenthey do the automaticity with
repeated one minute read likethree to five to seven times and
then they read the whole thingagain.
(47:49):
And because it happens in ashort period of time, the
students can really feel like afew minutes ago I couldn't read
this and now I can read it andthere.
So there's motivation in there,there's practice with the feel
of reading fluencies following amodel, and I'm just mentioning
that because I'm very familiarwith it.
There are many others, severalothers anyway that follow, that
(48:12):
are based on repeated reading,that follow that basic structure
.
But that's not all you would do.
You would hope that these kidswould have access to reading
more widely and applying theirnewly tentative automaticity or
fluency skills, really payingattention to expression and
(48:33):
prosody and all of that as well,while always maintaining
accuracy.
So yeah, I don't think we needto say one works and the other
doesn't.
They are different approachesTo me.
I've not seen evidence to showoh, we used to think that worked
and now it doesn't.
I think we have evidence thatthey both work.
(48:56):
So use them both or use themappropriately at the really
early tentative stages, wherekids are real behind and they've
kind of given up, Somethinglike a real targeted repeated
reading can give them a littleboost of confidence along with
(49:16):
their skills, what I've seen,and so that's sort of you know,
depending on the child we pickthe right intervention.
But the evidence to me, I think, is reasonably strong for both
of those.
Melissa (49:27):
Yeah, and it makes sense.
I'm glad you brought up theorthographic mapping because
that in my brain theorthographic mapping is what
leads to automaticity.
Right.
Orthographic mapping is whatleads to automaticity.
Right Is when you'veorthographically mapped those
words, now you can read themautomatically and the repetition
can be really.
Some students need even morerepetition than others, so that
repeated reading can be reallyhelpful for that.
Jan Hasbrouck (49:48):
Yes, yes, the amount of repetition, practice
dosage is a term being usedthese days varies widely and
that is in fact.
There's a lot of discussion inthe special education world,
that around that word.
Dosage, that that's thedifferentiator, you know.
All things being equal, somekids already have it, some kids
(50:09):
get it with a little instruction, and almost everybody, that
whole figure of 95% of kids, canbe taught to read basically at
least by, you know, by the endof grade two.
Um, there's strong evidence,strong evidence, I think, that
that somewhere in that vicinitythat that's the number we can
(50:29):
achieve and it's everybodybenefits from instruction.
They basically all need the samestuff.
Look at at Scarborough's rope,all that has to be there.
But some kids already have allthose things.
They need their dosages, nonedosage of instruction.
Most kids in most classrooms,the average typical kid need the
average typical amount ofinstruction and some kids need
(50:52):
extraordinary, extraordinaryamounts of instruction 50, 75
repetitions, 80, 90 repetitions.
And we've got to figure out andwe can't do that in the regular
classroom, that's where Tier 2and Tier 3 comes in.
But yeah, the amount ofpractice, the amount of
repetition, the dosage, if youwill, is something we need to
(51:13):
figure out as a system thing weneed to figure out as a system.
Lori (51:17):
Not each teacher needs to figure that out but the system
needs to acknowledge thatdifference in children.
Yeah, I'm glad you said that.
I'm thinking too.
It's not necessarily in mybrain.
It wasn't like one versus theother, like repeated readings or
this multi-component approach.
It's really weaving them bothtogether, jan, from what you
(51:38):
just said, in a way that makessense for the students in front
of us.
Right, right.
Jan Hasbrouck (51:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
Lori (51:48):
So helpful.
Oh my gosh, I love thinkingabout this with you and we're so
grateful that you came on againto talk about fluency.
What a treat.
We were thrilled the first time.
We're even more thrilled thesecond time.
So thank you so much and thankyou for really being vulnerable
and sharing your new learningwith us and our listeners, and I
feel like we all can relate tohaving those oh no, better, do
(52:11):
better moments, and we're withyou.
Jan Hasbrouck (52:14):
Love that motto.
We need to embrace that mottono-transcript.
Lori (52:45):
I was like no, because we're always still learning,
Just like you said.
That's right, the researchkeeps coming.
Yeah, Keep it on.
Well, thank you so much, Dan.
We are so grateful to have youback and you know we're just
thrilled that you wanted to talkfluency again with us.
So thank you.
Jan Hasbrouck (53:03):
Thank you for the opportunity.
Melissa (53:05):
It was a delight To stay connected with us.
Sign up for our email list atliteracypodcastcom, Join our
Facebook group and follow us onInstagram and Twitter.
Lori (53:16):
If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share
with a teacher friend or leaveus a five-star rating and review
on Apple Podcasts.
Melissa (53:26):
Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions
expressed by the hosts andguests of the Melissa and Lori
Love Literacy Podcast are notnecessarily the opinions of
Great Minds PBC or its employees, we appreciate you so much and
we're so glad you're here tolearn with us.
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