Fluency and Confidence, in Reading and Music

Occasionally I think all of our readings about reading can be difficult to relate to in our own experiences. We talk about using these concepts and ideas in the classroom, but I personally need a more personal connection to material to be able to really keep it in memory for future use sometimes. This section on fluency and the intervention of the Poetry Academy really got me thinking about my experience in music.

As I was reading, a lot of the techniques used to help students with their reading fluency had parallels with my life in music. I started playing the clarinet a year later than my peers, so in a way, I was a low-level reader when I was thrown in with them in my band class in 7^th grade. Partner reading, where one partner (the stronger reader) reads and the second repeats translates into practicing in pairs, where you essentially do the same thing, but playing a difficult part, not reading. Tape-assisted reading is just like how band directors gave us CD’s of our songs, both played professionally and by us to listen to and play with. Readers’ theater and radio reading, which are more progress-to-perform oriented, work just like chamber music concerts, where band students work on solos and small ensemble pieces to play for each other in a low-pressure performance. The more I read, the more I could relate. Maybe I don’t remember learning to read, but I do remember learning to play clarinet.

One of the big things I struggled with as a beginning clarinetist was confidence. Because I felt so far behind my peers, I never wanted to play at any audible decibel or in front of them because I didn’t think I was good enough. I think that a large part of these fluency practices, and especially the Poetry Academy, are working towards is reading confidence. When we feel inadequate at something it is almost always because we are comparing ourselves to our peers. I think this is where the Poetry Academy really made an impact because students were learning one-on-one with a helper—there were no “others” to be compared to in this situation. Also, by encouraging students that this was something cool and special (like Hogwarts) these students could feel like they were special too, which probably helped with confidence as well. Lastly, having students work on short poems that they can enjoy and learn with a little effort was sure to inspire self-confidence—learning that you can do something is what makes the difference in terms of a positive learning experience, it doesn’t matter how long it is. A small poem learned is the same as a whole novel learned for someone who needs the confidence boost just like a few bars of music is the same as a whole concerto for a beginner.

Graves, M. F. (2007). Teaching Reading in the 21st Century (5th Edition). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Wilfong, L. G. (2008). Building Fluency, Word Recognition Ability, and Confidence in Struggling Readers: The Poetry Academy. The Reading Teacher, 4-13.