Rereading Fluency: Process, Practice, and Policy

Rereading Fluency is an important and timely book…. The authors do not just criticize current policies and practices but offer alternatives for improving the quality of reading assessment and instruction.

 

Has your school spent tens of thousands or more dollars on fluency-based reading assessment programs? If so, you might be getting less for your investment than you think. Did you know?

 

Challenging commonly held notions of the effectiveness and importance of fluency, Rereading Fluency provides the vital information any teacher or administrator needs to determine the most effective way to help students read well.  

 

Combining a careful review of prior research with findings from their own thorough analysis of more than 120 second grade readers, Bess Altwerger, Nancy Jordan, and Nancy Rankie Shelton detail why, as a measure of reading success, fluency can fall flat. Using a multischool, multiprogram study, they compare the effects of commercial, phonics-based programs and noncommercial literature-based programs on students' fluency and overall proficiency. The results will surprise you:

 

Altwerger, Jordan, and Shelton don't just dismantle the arguments for considering fluency a key component of reading, they come through with specific critiques of DIBELS and offer better ways to assess reading (effective and efficient, not just fluent) that can improve instruction, assessment, and the success of young readers.

 

Whether your school is about to mandate a commercial reading program or a standardized fluency assessment, or it is trying to get out from under one, make Rereading Fluency,and make your powerful, research-based ally in the battle for improved assessment and instruction.