![]() ![]() So it just becomes this whole snowball effect where one thing leads to another and, all of a sudden, children are significantly behind and unmotivated and we run the risk of losing them. If you can’t read the material that builds your knowledge, then when you get into that material, you’re going to have trouble understanding it because you won’t have the background knowledge to support it. And we know that much of comprehension depends upon knowledge. If students are having difficulty reading material at their own grade level, they’re going to miss out on a lot of content, whether it’s social studies, science, or mathematics. In your view, why is access to grade-level texts so imperative? In terms of reading, we’re talking about the ability to read with expression, to raise and lower your voice, to speed up and slow down, to have dramatic pauses, all these things that make reading sound like natural language.įor this webinar, you’ll join NWEA literacy experts to discuss a growing shift in the literacy landscape: The push to help struggling readers level up by focusing on fluency and scaffolding instruction so these kids have access to rich, relevant, grade-level texts as soon as possible. Linguists call prosody the melody of language. It’s this thing called prosody, or expression. So that’s one part of it, but there’s this other part to fluency. I have often used this saying when speaking about fluency: “The goal of phonics instruction is to get kids not to use phonics.” We don’t use phonics when we read, hardly ever, just when we come to a word we haven’t seen before. When we read, hardly ever do we have to stop and sound out a word or examine a word or think about the meaning of a word. You and I, we’re the best examples of automatic word recognition. I began to apply some of the fluency methods I was learning about and, all of a sudden, some of them took off. I was an intervention teacher working with struggling readers couldn’t seem to budge many of them off the dime. And what that means is we can devote most of our mental effort to the more important tasks in reading, which involve comprehension. One is this thing called automatic word recognition, the ability to recognize words so effortlessly that you put minimal effort into word decoding. So it was a really good chance for me to get into something I wanted to learn more about and do the actual research myself.Īfter years of research and study, how have you come to define oral reading fluency? It was really pretty dramatic.Īt that time, I’m talking about the late ’70s, early ’80s, there really weren’t a lot of people doing a lot of research into reading fluency. I don’t think I even knew what fluency was, but suddenly it began to make sense to me. It just so happened that I was working on my master’s degree and profs had us reading articles on reading fluency. So what was causing these students difficulties in their reading? They could decode words, they had good vocabularies, and when I read to them, they understood. I couldn’t seem to budge many of them off the dime. I was an intervention teacher working with struggling readers on word recognition, phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension. What was it about oral fluency that captured your attention? Whether it’s a teacher working with a child or a 28-year-old graduate student, teachers can influence the future. He was very complimentary and said, “You’ve got to look into that.” It really illustrates the influence and power of a teacher. I had a professor who looked at one of the papers I had submitted and called me into his office and said, “Did you ever think about getting a doctorate?” And my answer was no. I was teaching and working on my master’s degree at the time, at the University of Nebraska. How did you make the transition into research and scholarship? You began your career as a classroom teacher outside Omaha, Nebraska. ![]() I connected with him to learn more about his research and what’s on tap for the webinar, “Fluency and equity: Helping all kids access grade-level text.” His responses have been edited for length and clarity. A critically acclaimed author and scholar, he was even inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame in 2010. Rasinski centered his research on oral fluency and is now one of the nation’s leading experts on this foundational reading skill. NWEA is excited to welcome award-winning reading instruction professor Timothy Rasinski, as well as our esteemed literacy experts Lynne Kulich and Cindy Jiban, for a webinar examining the relationships between oral reading fluency, access to grade-level texts, and equity. ![]()
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