Fluency and progress monitoring: Q&A transcript
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: When should progress monitoring be done?
Quite a few people are asking when should we do the progress monitoring with students.
Elaine Stanley:
We would say really at the end of each phase in a progression. When you are in the week that you're teaching the last sound in a phase, you might start to do your progress monitoring then. You can pick students out at opportune times to see how they're going. I would suggest starting with your more able students first, because it's easier to just pull them out and work through the progress monitoring pretty quickly. But, also, in your scheduled small-group time, or one-to-one time with individual students, you can use that time to do your progress monitoring there with those students because it might take a little bit longer. Some teachers like to plan a whole week for progress monitoring. They use it as a consolidation week and don't teach anything new, and just do all their progress monitoring in that time.
Kerrie Shanahan:
So, it's quite flexible really depending on what every teacher likes to do and how they run their program.
Elaine Stanley:
Whatever works for you really.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: How long does progress monitoring take for each student?
Another quick one about timing. People are asking, how long do you predict it takes for each child to do?
Elaine Stanley:
I would say really 5 to 10 minutes per student. Some are really quick, if they really have a good grasp, they're really quick at working through the progress monitoring tool. Some might take a little bit longer, so you really need to schedule in that, about 5 to 10 minutes across the week for each child. But remembering that some students won't get to the end of the assessment anyway. They may not be working at that sentence level yet.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Great. Thanks, Elaine.
Q: How do you know to move on to the next phase in your progression?
Elaine Stanley:
In our next topic, we'll really be looking at the whole-class dataset, and really unpacking how you know when to move on and how you know to cater to all of your students’ needs.
But, as a general rule, that 80% is the marker. If students have achieved that 80% understanding and application, then it's safe to move them on to the next phase.
Kerrie Shanahan:
So, the whole class 80%?
Elaine Stanley:
Yes.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Oh, that's great. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Q: Can you use the assessment pages more than once?
Elaine Stanley:
Yes. If students are having trouble with the assessment at any point you can stop the assessment. Usually, we'd say if there's three errors in a row, that's when you'd stop. But then you might like to plan some targeted teaching at that point of difficulty and go back and assess again with that phase.
So for those students, yes, it is okay to reuse the same progress monitoring tool. Often those students that need the most support won't have memorised what's on the sheet or anything, so it's fine to go back and use it again and just carry on with the bits you haven't done.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: How do you assess students' fluency when you use the progress monitoring tool?
Elaine Stanley:
Okay, that's a great question. What you're really doing when you are using the progress monitoring tool is really assessing students' accuracy and automaticity in applying the knowledge and skills that they've learned through their SSP lessons and instruction. At the letter–sound correspondence level, you want students to be really accurate in attaching the right sound to the right letter, but also in building that automaticity. You don't want students really hesitating and guessing – if you see that, I wouldn't tick them as having it yet.
As long as their accuracy is in place, then you can make a note to keep doing repeated practice to build their automaticity of doing it faster. But you really want to see both of those things happening. They can identify them accurately, but they're also building their automaticity and applying it.
Then at the word level for reading and spelling, you are really looking at whether they can combine those two areas of knowledge and skills. Their letter–sound correspondence knowledge and their ability to blend sounds to read words and then segment sounds to spell words. You want both of those things happening quite efficiently and automatically, that's what you're looking for.
And then at the sentence level, you are really looking for, again, students to be able to apply their knowledge and skills, but this time, at this stage, building up to that sentence level. But then at that level, that's also where you can start seeing that rate is starting to come in as well. Because they've built enough knowledge and skills by this stage, you can have a focus on making their reading sound like talking.
And you're thinking about the rate they're reading at as well. At that stage, that's usually around grade one, you can actually bring in more formal oral reading fluency assessments as well at that stage and you can start measuring that accuracy and bringing in that rate as well.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: Can you give us an example of an oral language reading fluency assessment?
You mentioned, Elaine, the oral reading fluency assessment. Can you give us an example of something you could use?
Elaine Stanley:
Yes. There are quite a few out there. A really popular one that people use and I've used this one myself, is the DIBELS Assessment Suite.
https://dibels.uoregon.edu/materials/dibels-australasian
There's an oral reading fluency assessment there from grade one onwards, and actually that goes up to Year 8. You can track all the way through. And those DIBEL assessments also track the lower-level skills as well, right up to that point of fluency. They're a really good suite of assessments that you can use for that.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: At what phase should students begin to work at the sentence level?
Elaine Stanley:
Obviously, it's different for each school and each grade and each student, but as a general guide for our progression, it's usually around Phase 3 that students have built enough knowledge and skills through their SSP instruction to start building their skills up to that sentence level. Before they're working at Phase 3 they would have had a lot of modelled and guided practice, because you're still incorporating sentence work into the lessons. It's really guided by the teacher up to that point. But around Phase 3, you'll see students start to be able to work at the sentence level.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Yes. So, Elaine, you say ‘Phase 3’ – that's in our progression – roughly when would you see a class get into that progression of Phase 3?
Elaine Stanley:
If you're starting in Foundation and you're teaching two to three sounds a week, which is what we recommend, that pace that you go at, then it equates to around the middle of Term 2 (roughly) that you start to get to that sentence level. And I suppose the thing to note is that, again, going back to accuracy before rate, students will be really slow and labored working at that sentence level, to begin with.
You're really looking at whether they can apply their knowledge and skills again, accurately, and slowly over time as they get more practice, they'll build their rate doing it. Around that grade one level, they're starting in Foundation, but around the grade one level, you'd be expecting that rate to be picking up as well.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: Should I do the progress monitoring assessment with students who can already read and write?
Elaine Stanley:
It's quite common to get some students coming into school in Foundation where they can already read and write at the word or sometimes even sentence level. But it's still a really good idea to do the progress monitoring assessment, because often those students have learned to read and write up to that point using whole-word strategies. They recognise words as whole units, but they're not using phonics skills often. So, by doing the progress monitoring, you'll be able to identify any gaps in their phonics knowledge and really address them.
Kerrie Shanahan:
That's so important, isn't it?
Elaine Stanley:
Exactly. Because the whole-word strategies will only take them to a certain point, but then they're going to need those phonics skills.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: Is fluency only related to poor orthographic mapping?
So, if that's the case, why is repeated reading often recommended to increase fluency?
Elaine Stanley:
Fluency in the early years, in the early stages, is mostly dependent on strong phonemic awareness skills. That's the ability to blend sounds to read words or sentences, and then segment sounds for spelling, and, also paired with that, their letter–sound correspondence knowledge. It's bringing those two areas together. What repeated reading or repeated practice helps students to do is become more fluent at bringing those two areas together. And when you think about the first time they're reading a new text that they haven't seen before, they're doing all that heavy lifting with just decoding and trying to get those words off the page. The repeated readings make that side of it easier, and they can really focus on the fluency aspect. Repeated readings are really powerful for that, for working on a really specific fluency focus.
The other thing is that repeated readings facilitate the process of orthographic mapping as well because the more often students come across words they see, they'll start to map them and then recognise them really quickly as they see them.
Kerrie Shanahan:
A couple of bonuses of the repeated reading.
Elaine Stanley:
Yes. So, it would build that as well. And I like to think that all of those things in learning to read are just like when you are learning to drive. In the early stages, if you think about learning to drive, you are really focused on the immediate things you have to do within the car. In my day and maybe your day, it was changing gears and getting the right gear and which side is the wiper and which one's the indicator, all of those things, how do I steer? And then that's why people have 120 hours of driving practice because slowly you've got to build those skills and make them more automatic.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Automatic, that's right and accurate.
Elaine Stanley:
Yes. Being a fluent driver. It's exactly the same with reading. To bring all their skills together to decode words and lift them off the page takes all their effort in the early stages. But as they build up with repeated practice and they build their skills, they can attend to the comprehension because all those lower-level skills become really automatic. That's what you're aiming for.
Kerrie Shanahan:
I guess Elaine, in that analogy of learning to drive, as a supervisor or driving instructor in the car, in the early stages our learner drivers need lots of scaffolding support. Our early readers need lots of scaffolding support when they're decoding, too. Then gradually that support can lessen.
Elaine Stanley:
And be pulled back.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Yes. As they become more independent.
Elaine Stanley:
And you can let go of that bar on the side that you're gripping onto too tightly in the early days, and let them go themselves a little bit.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: How do we approach fluency in Prep to Year 2?
And do you think it’s too early to focus on timing, as many children are still decoding?
Elaine Stanley:
A focus on timing is really a focus on measuring their rate that they're reading at. Really this kicks in, as I said before, around grade one when you're thinking about that fluency building to a rate that they're actually able to comprehend, to attend to comprehension as they're reading. You can do those more formal oral reading fluency assessments. But in terms of the early stages, so starting in Prep or Foundation, it's that accuracy and automaticity that you’re really tracking first, making sure they can efficiently apply what they've learned.
Through your progress monitoring, you get to do that, but you're not so focused at that stage on their rate of doing it, just that they can apply it really well. And then from grade one onwards, and especially as they start to get to that sentence level, then you can shift the focus onto rate as well because you want them reading at a rate that they can really track and understand what they're reading.
Kerrie Shanahan:
And that just shows how useful that progress monitoring tool that's on the Literacy Hub is, it's a really great tool for teachers to do that tracking.
Elaine Stanley:
And when you think about, in those early stages – so in Foundation – when you're focusing on that accuracy at applying what they've learned and automaticity and giving you those responses, that is what fluency is at that stage.
And then grade one, as we said, rate comes in, but by grade two really all of those things should be starting to come together and that's when you develop into that prosody side as well, moving from one to two. Yeah. It's a gradual build-up, but the progress monitoring tool really helps track along the way.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: Any tips on helping students who have English as an additional language or dialect?
Any tips on helping students who are EAL/D, and especially when their parents are not fluent in reading English?
Elaine Stanley:
All the things we've already described: having those consistent routines in your lessons and the opportunities for repeated practice, so students are constantly getting to have that repeated practice of applying all the things they've learned. Modelled and guided practice with teacher support. That's all really supportive of your students for who English is not their first language.
On top of that, it's really good to think about unpacking the words and the sentences that you use in instruction to really make sure students have a clear understanding of what a word or a sentence is telling them. Use lots of oral language, and even pictures sometimes, to explain the meaning of what you're presenting to students.
I often say to teachers, even those simplest CVC words can have multiple meanings. Like ‘tap’, we've mentioned before when we talked about decodable texts, ‘tap’ can mean turn on the tap or it can mean tap someone on the shoulder. Words like ‘pat’, which you often get in the early stages can be a name, but it can also be ‘pat someone’. So, just really thinking about explaining the meanings of words as well, and using them in sentences to give them the context of the words is really good for your EAL learners as part of SSP instruction.
In terms of what they're taking home, if they are not able to have that support from parents because they're not fluent in English either, then it's really important to make sure they're taking home books or tasks that they can do independently. Then the focus can be for the student to be practicing, getting that repeated practice and really building their fluency. I'd say that's something to really think about: making sure nothing's sent home that's too difficult and the child would need the parent's support, because that's going to cause some difficulties.
Kerrie Shanahan:
So nothing new or nothing too challenging.
Elaine Stanley:
Yes, and focusing on that fluency building is the way to go.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: Would you suggest conducting fluency from known texts or random texts?
Our next question: Would you suggest conducting fluency from known texts, like ones that the students are reading during the week? Or can it be more random texts?
Elaine Stanley:
If you’re working on building a student's fluency, then books that are familiar to them and they've already read – seen texts – are the way to go, because, they've done all the hard work with decoding the texts the first time they read it. And then in multiple readings, they can really focus on whatever areas of fluency they're working on. It's really good if you are working on fluency with a student with a seen text, that they really have a specific goal they're working on. That helps to really focus them, so even though they know what the story is and they know what the text is, they can actually focus on what particular area of fluency they're developing. That's really useful. It might be ‘making my reading sound like talking as I'm reading’, or ‘observing punctuation and stopping at the full stop or pausing at the comma’, those sorts of things. A specific goal really helps focus that.
Kerrie Shanahan:
So with the fluency we need to focus on accuracy first, then rate, and then finally prosody. So, step by step.
Elaine Stanley:
That's it. With an easy text or a familiar text, you can work your way through that because you can focus on different aspects and keep coming back to the same text.
Kerrie Shanahan:
And develop different components of fluency along the way. Great.
Q: Can older students reach their peak in fluency?
Elaine Stanley:
Yes, they can. Actually, all students can reach a peak in fluency. It's really important to have students understand that faster doesn't mean better when they're reading. And especially if you do get to the stage where you're timing students, they're doing a timed assessment, students will think, ‘Well, the quicker I go, the better score I'm going to get’, so they'll speed up. It's important to really make them aware that you're not timing them to see how fast they go, because they can actually undo their understanding if they read too fast.
Kerrie Shanahan:
So, if they're going too fast, it's more difficult for them to understand what they're reading possibly?
Elaine Stanley:
Yes, so we need to make them realise, ‘I'm timing you because I want to make sure you are going at a rate at which you understand what you've read, rather than going as fast as you can.’
Alongside that, it's good for teachers to know that when you’re looking at fluency norms for different year levels, the most commonly used ones are the Hasbrouck and Tindal Fluency Norm Charts that you often see. Reading Rockets is a good place to look for that, actually, if you haven't seen that before, just look up fluency norms.
https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/fluency/articles/fluency-norms-chart-2017-update
They actually have percentile scores, so there's the 50th percentile and then there'll be how many words read per minute. That means they're in that 50th percentile, but then they also have 75th and 90th percentile. And it's really good for teachers as well to realise that the 50th percentile is actually where you want to get students to. If they're reading at that rate, it's fast enough to process what you are reading and understand it. There's actually no benefit from getting students faster and faster above that. I think it's good for teachers and students to realise that.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: What are the best texts to use for fluency testing?
Elaine Stanley:
There's two areas to think about. If you're assessing students' fluency, and especially if you are using those oral reading fluency type assessments, it will be an unseen text – so an unfamiliar or an unread text – because you actually want to assess ‘cold’ how their fluency is progressing.
If you're working on building students' fluency in the classroom and you're trying to build it up to that next stage, then the seen texts are the ones to work with – familiar texts – so that they can really focus on their area of fluency and not on decoding the text.
Kerrie Shanahan:
So, it's like all assessments, it depends on the purpose, what you want to find out.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: What should I do if my students are fluent at reading but not at spelling?
Elaine Stanley:
That's a really good question as well because the two aren't always in sync with each other.
The reading side can be much easier for students to develop because there are fewer cognitive processes involved in the reading side of fluency than the spelling side, especially at the letter-sound and the word level. Even at the lower-level stages, to read a letter–sound correspondence or to read a word, you see the word, and what you have to do is attach the sounds to the letters and then blend the sounds to read.
Whereas for writing, it's a much more complex set of processes, because you've got to think of the word you're going to write, then you've got to segment the sounds, then you have to think of the letter that makes each sound. Then you have to think of how to form it, and it involves your fine motor skills to get that letter down. It can be much more complex, and it can take longer to develop fluency.
If you are doing your progress monitoring, for example, and you see that discrepancy between the spelling and the reading side, I would say the thing to do is really just slow down a little bit and have that increased focus on the spelling side in your lessons and in your daily reviews, and maybe not move along too quickly to the next phase until you can build those skills a little bit more in time.
Kerrie Shanahan:
So, there would always be some gap between the reading fluency and the writing? I'm just thinking of how complex it is, as you were explaining, just to write a word for these students.
Elaine Stanley:
That's where it's really important at each stage to work towards mastery learning. So, if your letter–sound correspondence fluency for the reading and spelling is in place before you move on, they'll help to develop that word-level reading and spelling. But if you haven't developed it for both at the level before, it will start to affect the next level. At each stage, you really need to build their skills in both sides before you move on too quickly to the next stage because it's going to help facilitate that next stage.
Kerrie Shanahan:
And in your live session, Elaine, and you can access a recording of that at the Literacy Hub, you really spelled out the importance of the letter-sound fluency first, then moving to word fluency, then sentence, and then that final text fluency in the reading and writing.
Elaine Stanley:
And spelling. Yes. But there will come a point too, if all the balls are in the air well, and you're doing all that repeated practice and students are really developing their fluency in both, it will even out and they'll be going well in both.
Kerrie Shanahan:
Q: How do we set specific goals with students around different areas of fluency?
Elaine Stanley:
In our live session, we talked about those specific areas of fluency that we think about.
You've got the accuracy, and then the rate, and then the prosody. When you’re assigning specific goals to students to focus on, you're really going to follow that progression as well.
It's always accuracy first. Make sure they're really applying their knowledge and skills accurately to each of those levels: letter-sound correspondence, word, sentence. It might be a goal at a letter-sound correspondence level. It might be a goal around making sure you’re attaching the correct sound and just practising with that goal in mind before you move on to the next goal.
Once accuracy is in place for your word reading and your letter–sound correspondence matching, then you can move on, especially once you start getting towards that sentence level, to focus on rate as well. Then you might make your goal around ‘make my reading sound like talking’, so they’re really thinking about that as they're practising reading. Or it could be ‘thinking about punctuation’, ‘pausing at the commas’ or ‘expression with the exclamation mark’. Your goals can be around that, building their rate and how they're stopping and pausing.
Following that, if those two things are in place, you might develop your goals around that prosody area. Using expression when someone's speaking.
Kerrie Shanahan:
For prosody, is teacher modelling a good way as well?
Elaine Stanley:
Yes. Before you get to that stage where students are practising that independently, you'd still be doing a lot of that modelled focus in class. The teacher is always modelling that. And even having practice sessions where students are practising with you using expression when someone's talking and the talking marks, that sort of thing, before you get to that stage again when students are expected to do that independently.