by Mathew Needleman, Open Court Resources.com

First let me tell you what I do not do. I do not put up a fluency chart on the wall showing where everyone is reading. Gail Tompkins confirmed this for me in Literacy for the 21st Century. While this might provide some subtle pressure if all your students were within ten words or so of the benchmark, and I know there are schools like that, what about the student reading 2 words a minute? It’s not like with just a little practice they’ll go from 2 to sixty in six weeks. The students who are far below the benchmark might begin to feel like they can never catch up and be embarrassed by their scores. I realize many teachers try to embarrass their students into achieving but this doesn’t work. Imagine if teachers’ student test scores were published on a chart and your students had scored the absolute lowest and your chart stayed up all year, how would you feel? Our union has an agreement that teacher test scores cannot be publicly posted. I think we need to treat students with at least the same respect as we ask for as professionals.

Although we do want all students to reach the benchmark and I do believe that all my students can get there, the speed at which they get there is unique to every child. If students are below the benchmark we can only get them to benchmark incrementally by setting reasonable goals along the way.

At my grade level each subsequent assessment expects a 10 word per minute jump in fluency speed. I believe 10 word a minute is a reasonable jump to expect from students. However, this means if a student is reading 10 words a minute on the first assessment I expect them to reach 20 words a minute on the second assessment. If they jumped up ten words a minute on each assessment, they’d be a seventy words a minute by the end of second grade. The truth is once students understand the concept of reading and are provided with much practice they often make greater jumps than ten words a minute. Nevertheless, ten words is a reasonable amount to expect in terms of growth.

Although I still must communicate with parents that their child is below grade level, in my discussions with students I set the ten words a minute goal with them, “Tommy, you read twenty-five words a minute today, I expect the next time we read together that you will be reading at thirty-five words a minute. How are you going to get there?”

Previously, if students didn’t make it to the sixty-five word a minute benchmark, students and their teachers would be failures. With the ten word a minute jump expectation, I can acknowledge a lot more students for meeting and even exceeding this expectation. I must tell you about Harry who went from reading thirty words a minute to reading eighty; he met his personal goal and the benchmark. But I must also tell you about Maria who was reading twenty words a minute last time and went up to forty words a minute this time; she did not make the state benchmark but she doubled her reading fluency. For Maria, this was an amazing accomplishment and I have no doubt that she will continue making gains. She feels good because she made her personal goal and I feel good because I am helping Maria move from where she was at the beginning of the year to where she is now and will be by the end of the year.

There will be students who do not make their personal goal. In my class, there were about four out of twenty. Those are the students who I am making very sure to work with over the next six weeks to help them improve. I am not as concerned that they are under the state benchmark but I am very concerned that they are not making what I consider to be reasonable progress.

© 2006 by Mathew Needleman, Open Court Resources.com