Fluency: The ability to read a text quickly and without error. This was my focus this past Friday in my second grade practicum classroom. I have sat down with all the students for the past two weeks, and timed their reading of a short text for one minute. I've recorded how many words each student reads in one minute, and then had them graph their words per minute (WPM). The texts were different both weeks, and the students have never read them prior to sitting down with me.
Here are the students' scores for both weeks:
(*indicate an increase in WPM)
Week 1 Week 2
102 106*
90 98*
100 98
61 59
90 91*
151 136
115 115
40 56*
70 74*
78 80*
97 71
136 139*
-- 30
109 104
58 42
36 35
75 64
136 141*
59 89*
85 85
129 104
129 110
22 56*
147 142
50 26
Only 10 students saw an improvement in their WPM during their second reading compared to their first. When my practicum teacher saw this, she seemed a little disappointed. It is good to see an increase in WPM each time a child reads. This text incorporated some big numbers (100, 500) and harder words (Isabel, inchworm, Blake). This caused a lot of the students to incorrectly say the word or number and then self correct soon afterwards. I think this played a significant part in the decreased WPM. I am curious to see where students score the next time I record their WPM. I think maybe reading the numbers out loud decreased their overall fluency.
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