Teaching Fluency Beyond the Primary Grades: Strategy Lessons To Meet the Specific Needs of Upper-Grade Readers

Tougher vocabulary. Richly detailed descriptions. Sophisticated syntax. As texts become more challenging in the upper elementary grades, the fluency skills readers need become increasingly critical. Midge Madden and Jane Sullivan deliver classroom-tested lessons that help grades 4–6 readers achieve accurate, well-paced, expressive oral reading with all kinds of texts. Modeling their fluency instruction in action, they show how to motivate, teach, and assess readers at different levels of proficiency. For use with Grades 4-6.

Midge Madden brings more than 30 years of experience to the teaching of writing and reading, and has worked extensively with at-risk students at the elementary level. She currently teaches literacy courses at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, and also works as literacy coach and staff developer in New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland. Madden presents regularly national and international literacy conferences on the topics of reading, writing, critical literacy practices, and teacher change. Her most recent work brought her to Guatemala where she worked with coauthor Jane Sullivan to provide a year-long staff-development project on teaching literacy at La Escuela Integrada de los Niños Trabajadoros. She and Sullivan began their collaboration with their first book for Scholastic, Teaching the Elements of Powerful Writing Using Great Fiction and Nonfiction Models (Scholastic, 2004).

Jane Sullivan, a former classroom teacher, is professor emeritus of Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. She also serves as a staff developer in the area and volunteers as a writing instructor in the fourth and fifth grades of Upper Township Elementary School in New Jersey. Since 1999, she has provided workshops in reading and writing to teachers in Guatemala, including a year-long staff-development project on teaching literacy at La Escuela Integrada de los Niños Trabajadoros with coauthor Midge Madden-a collaboration that began in 2004 with Teaching the Elements of Powerful Writing Using Great Fiction and Nonfiction Models (Scholastic, 2004). Sullivan also publishes articles for Teaching magazine and various children's magazines.