Tompkins 6

Tompkins 6- Fluency
Developing Fluent Readers and Writers.

This chapter was particularly interesting to me because when I think of fluency I automatically think of reading. I always leave out writing, and feel that many of my teachers in the past did as well. When I look at my own literacy skills, I know that my reading fluency is excellent, but I do not think as highly of my writing skills. I do not know if it is because I never learned to be a fluent writer, or if it is simply because writing requires coming up with new ideas.

This is not something I see often in the classroom. I am in a second grade classroom and rarely see students creating their own writing work. A fair amount of the time the students are simply copying down ideas that were written on the board. If students do create their own work, it is usually only two or three sentences long. How can we teach students to be fluent readers AND writers?