Fluency is essential for comprehension, but how exactly do you teach it? From Readers Theater and Repeated Reading of Song Lyrics to Poetry Podcasts and Fluency Masterpiece Galleries to Exploring Vocabulary and Incorporating Movement to Improve Prosody and Comprehension, you'll see how teachers from all over the country have incorporated effective fluency practice into their literacy instruction. Rasinski and his colleagues share their stories, complete with teacher interviews and effectiveness studies that document the success of each implementation. In addition, you'll find the resource materials you need to try each one in your classroom.
- Classroom-tested fluency strategies!
Timothy Rasinski is a Professor of Education at Kent State University. His interests include phonics and reading instruction, teacher development in literacy education, and working with struggling readers. Dr. Rasinski is an editor for the Journal of Literacy Research, has served as president of the College Reading Association, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the International Reading Association. He has written numerous books and articles on effective reading instruction, including The Fluent Reader.
Gay Fawcett has been in education for 36 years as a teacher, principal, language arts consultant, and curriculum director. She also directed Kent State University’s Research Center for Educational Technology. She is currently an independent consultant. She has authored and/or co-authored more than 80 articles for educational journals including the Kappan, Educational Leadership, Language Arts, The Reading Teacher, and others. She has also co-authored books, and book chapters including Partner Poems for Building Fluency: Grades 4-6 co-authored with Tim Rasinski and David Harrison (Scholastic), Teaching Children Who Find Reading Difficult co-authored with Tim Rasinski and Nancy Padak (Pearson), and others. She served with Rasinski and Padak as an associate editor of The Reading Teacher for six years.
Kristin Lems, Ed.D., is a Professor of ESL/Bilingual Education at National-Louis University in Chicago. Her books include: Teaching Reading to English Language Learners: Insights from Linguistics (2010, Guilford, Lems/Miller/Soro); Fluency Instruction: Research-based Best Practices (2006, Guilford, Rasinski/Blachowicz/Lems, Eds.). Kristin received a masters in TESL from University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign and a doctorate in reading and language from National College of Education, where she was named awardee for the first memorial Rebecca Barr Award. Her doctoral dissertation, Adult ESL Oral Reading Fluency and Silent Reading Comprehension, was chosen for a finalist award from the International Reading Association for Outstanding Dissertation in 2005. She is a former Fulbright Scholar and spent two years doing inservice teacher training in Algiers, Algeria.
Robert Ackland is one of the three program area coordinators of teacher education at the State University of New York, College at Plattsburgh. He worked as a reading specialist for six years, has served as copy editor for the practitioner-oriented journal Democracy & Education since 1999, and has published articles in Language Arts and the Journal of Staff Development. As a Professor of Literacy Education, Bob strives to help teachers develop their abilities to engage in action research and to find their voices as professionals and decision-makers.
