Re-assessing how I assess fluency

I've really been doing a lot of thinking about students becoming the architects of their own learning. I have begun incorporating learning targets and having students do some self-assessment on those targets.

An example of learning targets with stoplighting stickers. The students applied the stickers to indicate how they think they are progressing towards the targets.

What I noticed was that in terms of fluency, my students didn't have a clear picture of the criteria. And this is despite the fact that we use this rubric to talk about fluency:

I decided to put the rubric into a different format to see if I could break the criteria down better. I came up with our USIP Fluency House.

This is our class chart. Each student also has their own copy for their folders.

Our fluency house has four rooms. Today we focused on the speed room because that is mainly what they have been peer-assessing in the partner fluency checks. I broke the wpm down into a chart that let them know if they needed a lot of work, a little work, or if their speed was right on. The star colors signify this and I can tell at a glance how many students need to work on their speed. They put the appropriate color sticker on their personal fluency house as well, so I can see where individuals are just by looking in their folders.

The "speed" room close-up.

 Our next task will be to focus on the other rooms in the house. So far, I am the one best able to listening in order to assess using word phrases, intonation, and punctuation. But our plan is to find ways to audio or video tape each other so that the students can listen to themselves and their fluency partners to self- and peer-assess for those areas of fluency.

I am hoping that by breaking down fluency in this way, the students will be better able to create specific fluency goals for themselves and concentrate on their weak area. I also hope that this format will allow the students whose wpm is WAY above 150 to see that they may be reading too quickly and that their ability to use intonation or follow punctuation is being negatively affected by their speed.