This is my first year in first grade, and I was just wondering what level my students should be at right now? What fluency rate would be good or average at this time during the year. I was administering our state's reading inventory today, and found that one of my students is reading at 7 wpm at his instructional level. The reading inventory that we use has five stories. Story 1 is the easiest, and story 5 is the most difficult. According to the inventory he needed to be assessed on story 2. He decoded almost all of the words on the story but very slooowly. At the same time, I have about 8 students reading story 5. Could anyone give me an idea of where my kiddos should be? What can I do to help my 7wpm student? They recently found that he is dyslexic. Any ideas will help. THanks!
This is TPRI right? I think that at the beginning of 2nd grade they should be reading at 20 wpm? Story 5 with dyslexia at 7 wpm is a big accomplishment I would think!
I have three leveled groups. We fluency test every Friday. My below level group has reading rates from 10 wpm to 30. My on level group has rates from 40-90. My above level group generally finishes the text in just a few seconds, so when I calculate it out, they could be reading about 150 words per minute at that level.
No and I should mention that these are not cold reads. The children have read the books at least once before the fluency test on Friday. However, they read the book and on the fluency test, the words are transfered to a regular piece of paper without picture cues. The below level passage is about 70 words all together. The on level passage generally has about 100 words and the above level has anywhere from 100-140? words. The generally all have the same vocabulary and high frequency words.
Thanks terptoteacher! That's one thing that I haven't been consistent with-weekly fluency tests. I know that I should be doing this, but for some reason or other I'm always running out of time on Fridays. I've tried starting on Thursdays, and some weeks I do get around to testing all the students, and on other weeks I can't get everyone in. It's good to see how other teachers handle this and good to compare. I have been typing out the stories from their reading basals and the stories from the leveled readers, but I really don't know which is better to use. I was also wondering if it would be more of an accurate rate if I gave them a text that they've never seen before (and at increasing levels) -or if it was ok to use texts that they've read previously-that's the best way to see their improvement right? Sorry, I sound really clueless, and you seem to be doing such a great job!
Yes, I use the TPRI. To my knowledge, the students should be reading 60 wpm by the end of first grade. So, if a student is at 30 wpm right now, they should meet the goal if they continue progressing at the same rate. But of course, if 60 wpm is the marker, 60 wpm is not good enough for me! I know all students are different and some are slower than others, but I'm going to do work my boots off to make sure that these kiddos have all the skills they need to be successful in second grade. -And I will need everyone's help! Whos with me?!?!?!?! Ok. I need to calm down. I just get so excited thinking about what I can do. Thanks to people like you and terp who take the time to respond, I just may be able to do this.
greenapple, when I taught 2nd last year, I would give them fluency homework M-Th. I would type up a page from a guided reading book on different levels, they would read the same passage every night. They had a minute to read as far as they could, then parents would mark their wpm on a graph. By Thur they should have seen an increase in the wpm. It really helped some of my slower readers speed up a little.
We also go by the 60 wpm at the end of first grade. Some go well beyond that and others don't make it. That is where we want them all to be. It's always amazing to see the vast differences in first graders.
We used to have the benchmark of 60 wpm by the end of first grade. Unfortunately when Reading First came to WV it lowered the benchmark to 40 wpm by the end of first grade. The Jan. benchmark is only 20 wpm. A child can have a serious reading problem but it can not be addressed with special help because they met the benchmark that is set entirely too low. Of course that is the whole idea with Reading First. Lower the standards, cast a wider net and more kids "seem" to be doing well because they can meet the benchmark.:dunno:
Wow, Ferg that's a terrible thing that they're doing. It's just not right that they lower the standards like that. hmph
Wow, our vp went to a Reading first training and was really impressed. We're planning to have a before school reading session with the bubble kids using a conglomoration of reading first, read well, and houghton mifflen.
i think in Texas the 1st graders should be reading 60 wpm by the end of the year. I too administer the TPRI test and have found that some of my students are above grade level. However, there is a handful of students who are reading below the 40 wpm. I have one who placed into story 2 and hit frustration level so was bumped down to story 1. The student clocked in at about 12 wpm in over 7 minutes!! This made me extremely sad!
terpto--logistically, how do you get all of your kids fluency rates tested every Friday? I really want to start doing this...but I have no idea how I can possibly get 28 kids tested each week! How do you handle getting your's done??
Here's what I do on Fridays: I explain seat work--generally 4 or 5 things I will then start calling the children over one at a time. I will have them read the passage at their level. I have one assistant who also fluency tests the children. Between the two of us, we can test 25 students in one hour.
I love discussions on fluency! I've had all sorts of classes in the past few years teaching 1st grade. This year, I have kids reading from 40wpm to 180 wpm. With my slower students, I work on word families and sight words with them. With my faster students, I work on phrasing and intonation with them. Sometimes this actually slows down their speed, but at a certain point, I want my really fast readers to slow down a bit.
Our first grade teachers have the kids read the basal story (Tuesday through Friday) and then we send home their reading book over the weekend. On Monday the kids do a fluency read over the story. We use their scores as a reading grade (fluency and accuracy). Also, once every two weeks we test our lower kids on cold reads and we test our on level and above level kids once a month on cold reads. Our title teacher enters the results of the cold reads on AIMSweb and then we get a graph of the results. It is a really nice tool! Our target right now is 24 wpm on a cold read. We use Dibels sample tests so there are words in the read that the kids are not familiar with yet.
I've been thinking about giving the week's levelled reader fluency test on a Monday as a cold read, then on the next Friday, give it again as a hot read to see the improvement.
