Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency

Offering a complete picture of how to skillfully teach meaning making and fluency within any instructional context, Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, K-8, supports you with frameworks for high-quality instruction that describe appropriate expectations for comprehending, fluency, and vocabulary development.

Fountas and Pinnell's teaching and assessment frames will give you a firm understanding of your students' reading levels: where they are, where they should be, and what they need to do to get there-for any reader, in any grade, at any moment. You'll also gain insight about the specific demands that fiction and nonfiction texts place on readers and about how effective readers think within a text, beyond a text, and about a text to gain rich understandings. As you learn about how the characteristics of texts help or hinder a reader's improvement, you'll find effective teaching strategies for:

comprehending, word solving, fluency, and vocabulary writing about reading in a variety of genres and using writing as a tool for thinking using guided reading with fiction and nonfiction books discussing books during interactive read-aloud and literature study taking part in shared and performance reading. Fountas and Pinnell's teaching tips, smart strategies, proven classroom ideas, and professional-learning opportunities will lead the way as you discover how to help readers develop effective systems of strategic actions over time. You'll also learn how to take running records of reading behavior to assess comprehension and fluency then use those assessments to inform and differentiate your teaching.

In addition, Fountas and Pinnell have also added a dynamic companion resource to Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, K-8 a DVD containing short, focused video segments that illustrate concepts from the book and demonstrate exemplar teaching in real classroom settings. The DVD is also a repository of useful materials to support your work-including blackline masters, forms, checklists, and numerous other classroom tools.

Fountas and Pinnell have developed detailed teaching guides for Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency. Perfect for staff development leaders or teacher educators, these guides offer all the specifics on leading a professional development program or preservice course on comprehension instruction with Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency as the core text.

Each of the guides is written to address a specific course of study and is available for free download along with its accompanying course syllabus:

Professional Development Program:

Individual Study/Group Study (20 sessions) Preservice Teachers:

One Semester Course (14-week college/university course) Preservice Teachers:

One Quarter Course (11-week college/university course) Graduate Students:

One Semester Course (14-week college/university course) Graduate Students:

One Quarter Course (11-week college/university course) Click on the "Companion Resources" tab to download each of the guides.

Discover powerful ways to help your students read with deep understanding and fluency. Read Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, K-8 and be part of the big breakthrough in literacy instruction.