Chapter 10

One thing I really liked in this chapter was in measuring fluency. Beers was talking about why fluency matters and how it can be a problem. In one paragraph, she broke down the rate of words per minute a student reads. I was really surprised by just how long it could take a high school student to read 20 pages. For a student who only reads 60 words per minute, it would take that student 2 and 1/2 hours to just read the assignment. It would be very hard for a student to complete reading and assignments if he or she struggled that badly with fluency. I also liked that at one point Beers said, "Flash cards drills, placing words on word walls, listening to a teacher read aloud, following along in a text while listening to an audiotape of the same text-these teaching strategies are not reading." I liked that she offered strategies on how to help improve fluency, but the main way for students to improve in reading is simply by reading.