Glossary

Assisted reading is a strategy where a tutor provides support for a student reading from a text at that student's instructional reading level.

The tutor provides:

• Comprehension support: Previewing stories, activating and building student's background knowledge, setting a purpose, helping students to predict, summarize, and answer questions.
• Contextual reading support: Echo reading, and/or partner reading to support fluency.
• Word recognition support: Encouraging analysis of unfamiliar words, self-correction, and if necessary, providing unknown words.

Goals:

• Comprehension development
• Reading strategy development which includes: word analysis and self-monitoring techniques

Comprehension is the act of incorporating information from text into background knowledge. Comprehension is Critical!

Comprehension focus occurs during the assisted reading component of the lesson. First, interventionists preview the story--activating and building background knowledge and front-loading 5-6 words that could potentially present difficulty. In addition, interventionists ask questions and provide scaffolding throughout assisted reading to help students discern important content and text elements. For example, narrative text typically centers on a main character with an ongoing conflict. Expository text usually focuses on one or more main ideas, along with supporting details.

To guide comprehension instruction during intervention, the UURC provides a bookmark that contains suggested questions for the assisted reading component of the lesson. To see a mock-up of the bookmark, follow this link.

Fluency is the ability to read text with satisfactory accuracy, speed, and expression, (attention to punctuation and intonation).

Research has shown that there is a close relationship between fluency and comprehension (National Reading Panel Report, 2000).

 Fluency develops along a continuum. Beginning readers operate, by definition, primarily at the "disfluent" end of the continuum. With instruction, time and practice, fluency gradually improves.

There are three well-known methods for helping students improve their reading fluency. These methods are most appropriate for students reading at the 1.2 level and above (Morris, 1999).

1. Easy Reading: The student reads text at his/her independent level. The focus is on improving phrasing and speed with text that can be read with very few errors.
2. Taped Readings: A teacher/tutor records a story that is slightly above the student's instructional level. The student then practices reading the story with the tape. This can be done at school or home. After several practice reads, the student reads the story without the tape to another person (teacher, parent, and so on).
3. Repeated Readings: The student reads the same text 4 times (on 2 different days). See reading reading charts for tracking student progress.

Frustration reading Levels include text for which a reader does not have adequate background level for a topic and/or cannot meet criteria for instructional levels of accuracy and rate.

Think of frustration levels as those levels that require extensive or even moderate assistance from an educator.

To get a sense of frustration level text, think about a skill or ability for which you have expertise (e.g., skiing, knitting, writing, playing a musical instrument). It is very likely that you developed this ability gradually, and with assistance. You took on more challenging levels when you had mastered your current level. Now imagine being a beginner again, and facing advanced, or even intermediate level tasks every day. Would working at "frustration level" help you to make progress? What might happen to your motivation for learning? Now, think about the fact that many children read at frustration level for most of their day. It is a tribute to the resiliency of children that they forge onward!

See the Fluency Criteria Chart for specific grade level criteria..

Independent reading Level is the highest level at which a reader has adequate background knowledge for the topic  and can access the text very quickly, with very few errors.

Think of independent level as the highest level you would ask a child to read without help.

See the Fluency Criteria Chart for specific grade level criteria..

Instructional reading Level is the highest level at which a reader is not independent, but has adequate background knowledge for a topic, and can access text quickly and with no or few errors.

Think of instructional level as the highest level you would ask a child to read with only a small amount of assistance.

The vast majority of text that a child reads during the school day should not exceed this level.

See the Fluency Criteria Chart for specific grade level criteria..

Reading Level is a term used to describe the highest equivalent grade level at which a reader can access text with or without assistance.

See: Frustration Reading Level, Instructional Reading Level, Independent Reading Level.