Jackson wasn’t in school today because he had broken his collarbone playing football earlier in the week. I had planned on doing a cold read of a DIBELS reading text and then going over the words that Jackson would have struggled with and reading the passage together. Then after we were done with that I was going to give him a hot read and see if his fluency improved at all. I was looking forward to doing this because I wanted to get an idea as to what his reading fluency is really like but because he wasn’t here, I couldn’t do it with him.
Instead, I worked with the other student that Tia and I was given to work with. I did what I had planned with Jackson with Max. When he first read the text, he only read 46 words per minute. He struggled with the words Asia and village. After I went over these words and described what they were for Max, we read the text together. After we read the text together, he re-read the text and read 74 words per minute. I asked him questions after he read the text to see if he understand and was comprehending what he was reading. The second time around he only struggled with the word ourselves and since. Max had almost a 30 words per minute increase in his reading after being given the chance to re-read the text. This shows me that his fluency is at a decent rate and not as low as a cold read can present it at.
I’m excited to give Jackson a cold read, work with him on the text and then a hot read when he gets back and is feeling better. This could show me a lot about Jackson’s fluency skills and he would feel better about himself knowing that he can read more when given a second chance and the opportunity to look the text over more than once. They always say that you can’t base anything off of one test because the child could be having an off day.