Fluency and comprehension

Unlike the other contributors to this blog, I interning in a third grade. When dealing with fluency and comprehension, I feel that there is a major difference in skill level between the two grades. That being said, we do have five students who are not reading in my class.

I have really been thinking about one of these students lately. She is a "newcomer" as my school calls her. She recently moved from another non-English speaking country. She is completely literate in her native language, but that language uses a different alphabet. Since moving to the United States in September, she has completely learned the new alphabet and the sounds that go along with all of the consonants, as well as some of the basic vowel sound rules.

At this point her fluency is better than some of the other children in our class. The principal of Vandenberg often invites English language learners to read for her as a way of encouragement. The child from my class was already invited to read for her. She got to read two books, and got all but one word right. One of the children in our class heard her practicing before she got to go. She was really excited for her classmate. In fact, she said to me, "I had no idea she knew how to read. That is awesome!" The principal's reaction was similar to this child's classmate. When I spoke with the principal, she was exclaimed about how far she had come in a month and a half.

However, she also spoke of one other thing. The principal asked the child questions while she was reading. She said to her, "What does jump mean?" The child got out of her seat and jumped. The principal then asked, "What does tap mean?" The child looked at her blankly.

Is this child reading? The answer to me is simple. She does not speak English. She knows some basic words that have been specifically taught to her. Her vocabulary is expanding every single day, but the fact remains that she is not even socially fluent yet, let alone academically fluent. She is great at pronouncing different words, but that does not mean that she knows what she is reading.

There are two components of reading, and both really need to be present to be able to say that a child is really reading. While this child is in a great position to be an efficient reader because she is learning the words she needs for comprehension, and her fluency is making great strides every day, right now she is simply pronouncing words.