One Minute Fluency Measures

From student teaching recently and from my professors I have learned that as a teacher you are just plain busy! There never seems to be enough time in the day, so you need quick ways to assess children's reading skills. In the article One-Minute Fluency Measures: Mixed Messages in Assessment and Instruction, Theresa Deeney teaches readers how to implement one minute fluency measures into the classroom. Doing these one minute fluency measures will allow you to provide the children in your class with the personalized assistance they need to develop to their highest potential level as a reader. Also, since it only takes a minute it will allow you to have the time to scaffold children as well. Here are some tips for doing these from Deeney's article:

1. Notice the number of words the child misses in a minute.
2. Pay attention to how many words a child reads in a minute.
3. Notice the rate that a child reads at.

Assessing children does not have to be a long, drawn-out process if you implement Theresa Deeney's ideas into your classroom.