The Poetry Academy and Fluency

After reading this article, I was pleasantly surprised. The fact that so many students improved so drastically by a short and simple weekly meeting and task is truly wonderful. Wilfong is an expert at knowing what kids need to learn best. She knows how important one-on-one time is with each student in order to truly see problems and improvements. She also knows that good, short assignments are almost always preferred over long assignments due to their quickness and simplicity. And lastly, she realizes that when humor and pleasant topics are involved in schoolwork, students usually find it more enjoyable.

At first, I did not understand how reading something multiple times improves one's fluency, word recognition, and reading confidence. It is difficult to see how something so easy has such amazing results, it is so incredible. I wish that "The Poetry Academy" had been around when I was in elementary school because it yields great results in a short amount of time. I would have loved to improve myself and my confidence in reading when I was at that age. I remember loving to silent read, but hating to read aloud in front of all my classmates. Even up until the sixth and seventh grade, I still disliked reading aloud. I always felt embarrassed and only tried to read perfect aloud, not actually understand what I was reading while I was saying it.

Another thing that really stood out to me in this article was Wilfong herself. The reasoning behind her program is great and I like the desire she has to improve young readers. She went out of her way to try to find people to help and was so motivated to make her program a success. I love how she mentioned Harry Potter in this article and its significance to the situation. The fact that she wanted to make her students feel proud that they were in "The Poetry Academy" and worked hard to make sure this was so is one of my favorite things about her. More teachers need to have qualities like her. Wilfong's creative mind, motivation to help, and knowledge on how to really connect with kids makes her a great role model for all teachers.

After reading Graves Chapter eight on fluency, I found a lot of different approaches to helping students achieve fluency. My favorites were "readers theater" and "radio reading." If I was in elementary school, I would find these two activities to be the most entertaining to help me practice my fluency. The best part for teachers? Students will not even realize they are doing schoolwork because these tasks are so fun. If I was going into reading as one of my cores, I would definitely do activities such as these.