Poem Coding, Fluency, & RtI

I have a student in the third tier of RtI.  She struggles with fluency, but has been working oh so hard to improve!  

I found a way that I thought would help her.  If you have been following my Wednesday posts for the past couple of weeks, you know that I had the pleasure of listening to Georgia Heard speak at a conference.  Click here if you missed those posts.  She talked with us about using poetry for fluency and the common core.  

Georgia Heard gave this idea of using symbols to help the student practice their fluency.  I call this poem coding.  

I handed my student the poem, Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving, and the coding card.  She went through  a paragraph at a time and coded it to what she felt sounded right to her.  She naturally knew where to slow down, stop, and raise her voice.  

You can also see where she was having difficulty with multi-syllabic words.  She has learned to draw in her lines to break the words to help her read them. I find it interesting to look at her work on the poem sheet.  It is like a work in progress to better fluency!

I have to say that this coding really helped my student and she got to where she could read this poem quite well!  Coding the poem seemed to help her to think about how it should sound, the punctuation, and using expression.  It was an easy tool for her to put into practice too.  I really appreciate going to a conference and receiving practical resources that you can immediately put into place and that really help our students!!