Peer to Peer Fluency

At my school, we do monthly Oral Reading Fluency "assessments." Do you guys do monthly ORFs??  I actually kind of like them. they only take a minute, because you're only assessing their rate of fluency, and then that way you have a quick look at who still needs help and who has skyrocketed! We use Dibels, which comes from University of Oregon. Check them out {HERE} - you might want to use them even if you don't Dibels. BUT, since we use those passages as our assessments, I like to have weekly fluency passages. 

Now, at our school, we do Peer to Peer Fluency. I'm not sure if it's a "known" thing, or our county thing...or just our school thing...I just know that what WE do...
 It's where they have a partner listen to them read, and then mark the words they read incorrectly, or couldn't say, and then put a mark where they stopped reading. 

Here's an example of what it looks like..


This person only got one word wrong, and the listener marked where they stopped reading with a bracket.

THEN, they tell me where their partner stopped, I find the place on the "teacher" one (which has the sentences numbered with the number of words already...lol) and I mark it on the fluency chart...Then they switch roles and do it for another minute. They do the same passage all week long...so you can see their progress...and so they can see that they more they read, the better they get!

Here are few examples...

(they had given us a form, but I chose to "pretty" it up because it was just TOO boring for me..lol. I couldn't help it...and actually, it wasn't my idea. It was my teaching neighbor and she doesn't EVER care what anything looks like. Well...until I came along. She said I have ruined her for life..ha!)
Even though this person didn't have any errors, he can see that his WPM is improving, which is also good!

This one shows great improvement!

Now, my teaching neighbor does it whole group. But I like doing it in my small groups...that way I can kind of pay attention to how they are reading and kind of eaves drop on their reading. I can't really do that when I do it whole group. BUT what works for me doesn't always work for you and what works for you may not work for me, right!? So you do what works for you!

Here they are in action...


And I just have my timer that I use to tell them to stop or go.


Each week, we also use their "self-reflection" sheet... It really showed me when we first started doing this that they had NO idea what the different components to reading were.


To get my Peer to Peer chart and the self reflection freebie sheet, click HERE.

Now...what do I use for my peer to peer fluency time???

One of my go-to resources for my 1-minute Peer to Peer is Jen Jones' Lexiled Fluency passages...I just love that she's done all the hard work for me! The fact that they're lexiled is perfect because I can easily differentiate...her pack comes with a way to graph fluency rate as well!



Another one I really like to use is the phonics sentence fluency that Jen Jones has. I can definitely differentiate with that pack too, allowing my struggling kids to work on phonics skills that they are at. 

I also really like to use Christina's sight word fluency packs.  This way I can also use whatever level of sight words they need. I do a quick assessment every so often of the Fry's first 300 sight words on my students, and I go from there! That's why I love her sight word packs....
I've been using them for a while now, and I love them.




So, I hope that was helpful for you?? Did you get SOMETHING out of it?! It's one my favorite things of  "data" to bring to our RTI meetings too...lol...I guess that's good, right?!

8 comments

Unknown said...

Fantastic and helpful to say it in a nutshell. I have NEVER thought of doing this and would love to give it a go. I teach kinder so it would work at this end of the year(term 4 in Australia). Do you have any extra tips for kindergarten assessments? Definitely sharing your post with the other teachers at my school. Thanks !!!
Julie
Mrs Stowe's Kinder Cottage

Unknown said...

Me again...so I checked out Dibels and found the kindergarten sounds lists and word lists. Guessing you use these for fluency at the start of kinder. Thanks again for your direction with peer fluency.
Julie
Mrs Stowe's Kinder Cottage

Suzzanne said...

It reminds me of The 6 minute fluency program - http://www.soprislearning.com/literacy/six-minute-solution, I did with my 3rd -5th graders in 2003-2006. I never thought to do it with my first graders. Thanks for sharing! I also love the free download of the forms.

Suzzanne Horton

Mrs. Yazzie's Classroom News said...

We use DIBELS and yes, I'm suppose to be progress monitoring ORF on a regular basis (struggling: every week; approaching: 2x/month; on track: monthly). But...I find that I don't quite keep to that rigorous schedule. I love this because it get the kids involved and allows them plenty of practice.

a passion for primary said...

Thanks so much for sharing this!!! I will use this for tracking fluency. We have to track each intervention we provide for kids for RTI purposes and this will be perfect for it. Always find something awesome when I visit your blog!

thanks again,
rene'

xyz said...

Jen, thanks for the shout-out!!! I love your post. Please let your Kindergarten teacher followers know that my PM Set 1 is perfect for checking Kinder fluency. I am creating an Kindergarten RTI PM pack now, too. Thanks again! Jen

Reading Is Elementary said...

This is a great post. I think I may use this with my pull-out reading groups! I have plenty of passages, but love the forms you created! Thanks!

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