Picked up a good book lately?  Well, my shelves are literally busting with school-related books and I just organized them into categories.  During my organizational frenzy, I came across Tim Rasinki’s book The Fluent Reader.  I read this book cover to cover over spring break one year and absolutely loved it!  I reopened the book once again, shook out some sand and read a few chapters.  Here’s a little snippet from the book. According to Rasinski, “reading fluency refers to the ability of readers to read quickly, effortlessly, and efficiently with good, meaningful expression.”  Fluent readers are able to recognize many words by sight and, when coming upon an unknown word, able to decode the word quickly.  Because good readers

I’m on spring break now and before leaving had to decide which book to pack for reading on the beach.  I came oh so close to purchasing the Hunger Games, but grabbed Timothy Rasinski’s book The Fluent Reader from our loaning library at work instead  (sad, I know).    I’ve read the book before and remember thinking it was filled with great strategies for improving reading fluency.  What I didn’t remember, however, was that the first chapter was devoted to an interesting account of the history of oral reading and silent reading in American education as well as pointing out the drawbacks of current practices such as round robin reading.   Here’s a snip-it of what I’ve read: It hasn’t been until