The 6 Minute Solution Teaching your students to be fluent readers

Reading Do your students hate to read? Do your students struggle over high frequency words? Is it painful to listen to your students read out loud? Are your students meeting standards?

What does the research say? There is a high correlation between comprehension and fluency. Comprehension suffers when students lack fluency. If students are not fluent, cognitive energies are focused on decoding and word recognition and therefore are not available for comprehension. 44% of 4th grade readers are not fluent readers. Research shows that educators have the knowledge and tools to affect this problem.

Why teach fluency? Nothing is more painful and frustrating to a teacher than to hear a student arduously reading a sentence word by word, seeming to have to physically drag himself or herself to the end of the sentence The 6 Minute Solution is a research- based, highly effective instructional procedure for grades 3-8 that builds reading fluency in only 6 minutes of the instructional day Good readers as well as struggling readers benefit from this daily fluency practice

Fluency can be taught Guided, repeated oral-reading procedures are appropriate and valuable avenues for increasing reading fluency and overall reading achievement Fluency practice supports comprehension As students build fluency through rereading, they amass a larger reading vocabulary Click here for more info

How the Program Works Students are paired with a student who reads at approximately the same level and speed. Partner 1 reads for one minute while partner 2 listens and records errors. CWPM are recorded on student’s Fluency Record. Students switch roles.

Pre-Assessment Assessment is critical in determining fluency partners and in selection of the appropriate reading level of the Practice Passages. Students’ instructional reading levels using the San Diego Quick. Students’ oral fluency rates on a Practice Passage (CWPM - correct words per minute).

Selecting Fluency Partners Create Excel spreadsheets using pre-assessments data Match students as closely as possible by both their oral-reading fluency rates and their instructional reading levels An appropriate match is critical to success

Training Students Spend ample time training students in the procedures Instruct students in appropriate fluency partnership behavior Employ an explicit instructional model when teaching the procedures Model, model, model Give feedback and remodel before students practice the procedures independently

Program Advantages Program can be used with the entire class daily. Students are responsible for keeping track of their progress. Students can see their improvement. Students continue to encounter more challenging texts during school year so all students continue to grow.

Summary Students reread to build fluency Student partners work together to build fluency Fluency influences decoding, comprehension and reading achievement Work completion and reading achievement improve