Method to Improve Reading Fluency, Article Review Example

Clementi, L.B. (2010). A motivating method to improve reading fluency: even reluctant readers perk up when teachers use a reading practice that is fun for students, even in the content areas, as well as effective. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(5), p.85(4).

Summary

The present article is dedicated to the assessment of the new strategy in teaching fluency in reading – the Reader Theater. The idea of Readers Theater is to teach students reading in an unusual, playful and motivating way. The author of the article underlines that the strategy is highly flexible, enabling the educator to adjust assigned reading scripts to the level of readers in the class. It involves reading a textual excerpt by the student for 15-20 times, which is likely to result in increased accuracy and speed of reading (Clementi, 2010). In addition, the activities included in Reader Theater framework, help the teacher involve parents in the reading process – this effect can be achieved in case the texts are given for home reading, and students start to practice their fluency and expression at home (Clementi, 2010).

There has been much research in the sphere of Reader Theater efficiency, and the majority of studies have proven the popularity of the approach among students, increased efficiency, fluency and motivation in reading, sight words application, word list recognition etc (Clementi, 2010). The comprehensive integration of Readers Theater into the classroom promises to simplify the process of learning reading for struggling readers and will enable the teacher to keep students motivated. Content-area reading is also essential in the Reader Theater schedule – learning to grasp names, figures, dates etc. is the basic element of abstract notions’ recognition that is targeted by the Reader Theater method (Clementi, 2010).

Analysis of Research/Methodology

There has been much research in the field of implementing Reader Theater in the classroom, and it proved highly productive, which is seen from the results of Griffith and Rasinski (2004), Casey and Chamberlain (2006) or Corcoran (2005) . The main focus of research has been on the growth of motivation for reading and fluency in it. Thus, the research of Griffith and Rasinski (2004) showed that one year of Reader Theater application equaled 2.5 years for Title I readers and 1.25 years for struggling learners, which was surely a breakthrough. Casey and Chamberlain (2006) assessed the ability of Reader Theater to increase fluency in reading in their 12-week study that showed more than a 50% increase in students’ reading efficiency. Other researchers also indicate the growing figures of motivation, fluency and smoothness of reading in all studies, which speaks in favor of the approach.

Recommendations for Implementation

The method is surely a highly effective one in case of dealing with struggling or reluctant readers because of its fun, motivational and flexible framework. Students who experience hardships in reading may practice at home and get fully familiarized with the text, which will lead to their higher potential in reading it afterwards. However, the key element of success for Reader Theater is to provide a constructive support and evaluation process; in case students are able to assess their own success and evaluate the advancement of their group-mates, they will become much more engaged in the process of participating in Readers Theater. They will also be able to create self-assessment tools that will enable them to gain more proficiency in future, upon the completion of the reading course. However, there are some limitations in the discussed approach, e.g. students get accustomed to working with texts of limited sizes and will still have problems in improvisational work with new, unknown texts.