In California, our unit assessments which align with the Open Court Reading series aren’t from the publishers of Open Court but from the Sacramento County Office of Education.
The tests’ emphasis on timing students reading leads teachers to teach reading in a dibels-like fashion with reading passages typed with numbers of words written at the end of every line. While a certain amount of practice with these passages might reduce stress level on the day of the tests, a steady diet of “fluency passages” will surely turn students off to reading for life.
In college did you ever try to read through one of your texts as fast as you could? How much of it would you remember if you did?
Aside from turning students off to reading, research has shown that techniques like Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) and Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) are less effective at increasing students’ fluency levels because students are reading independently and not receiving any feedback on their reading. More effective then would be partner reading or group reading where students are reading with others. Fluency passages lend themselves to testing. Even if students have partners, their goal is usually to see how many mistakes each other makes and to figure out how fast they’re reading (that’s the point of a fluency passage). If you have taught your students to offer corrective feedback when reading fluency passages then why not teach them to offer corrective feedback when reading authentic literature or anything else that’s more interesting than a sheet of text with numbers?
While there are plenty of free fluency passages available (and again I say a little bit might be healthy if continue to assess using the same format), I would strongly recommend teachers using reader’s theater packets instead of fluency packets for daily fluency practice.
There is tons of free Reader’s Theater available and I’ve written before about how to use it. Reader’s Theater is generally more interesting, it demands that students read together, by nature it emphasizes prosidy, and it encourages rereading for a genuine purpose.
Is Reader’s Theater effective with secondary students? I haven’t found much for upper-level classes; most of the skits are clearly geared at elementary students.
@Clix
When we use Reader’s Theater in the primary grades it is for increasing fluency and the research I’ve read supports it. If your secondary students do not read fluently then it would likely help them as well though you’ll want to find age-appropriate material. The resources I know of are geared toward elementary students. You might try actual plays that are published and available in book stores. At all grade levels I think Reader’s Theater has the potential to increase student engagement.