Practical Fluency: Classroom Perspectives, Grades K-6

by Max Brand, Gayle Brand

All teachers know helping students become fluent in reading and writing involves more than measuring reading rates. Growth in fluency comes when teachers balance regular, systematic instruction with short bursts of teaching targeted to individual needs. But what does this look like in practice? And how can teachers integrate more fluency instruction into already packed literacy schedules? Max and Gayle Brand have worked together with students and colleagues over many years to discover the most effective whole-class, small-group, and individual strategies and activities for building both reading and writing fluency. They link all this work to the most current research on fluency, taking readers into the daily routines of their classrooms. Practical Fluency sample lessons adapted to both primary and intermediate grades;detailed portraits of whole-class lessons and discussion;examples of how to differentiate fluency instruction;a research base for fluency linked to specific teaching strategies;fluency prompts and assessment rubrics. Readers will be reassured by the many suggestions for integrating fluency into existing reading and writing workshop routines. In addition, this compact guide contains a wealth of suggestions for maximizing fluency instruction during transition periods, small-group instruction, and read-aloud sessions.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Frederick Schiller Faust (see also Frederick Faust), aka Frank Austin, George Owen Baxter, Walter C. Butler, George Challis, Evin Evan, Evan Evans, Frederick Faust, John Frederick, Frederick Frost, David Manning, Peter Henry Morland, Lee Bolt, Peter Dawson, Martin Dexter, Dennis Lawson, M.B., Hugh Owen, Nicholas Silver

Max Brand, one of America's most popular and prolific novelists and author of such enduring works as Destry Rides Again and the Doctor Kildare stories, died on the Italian front in 1944.