Fluency

“You can’t read to learn until you first learn to read.” -Rod Paige, US Secretary of Education

Fluency Grades 1-5 Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly (automaticity). (Samuels, 1994) Fluency is the ability to read text with accuracy at an appropriate rate, and with appropriate expression/phrasing (prosody).

Research says… Repeated and monitored oral reading improves fluency. Repeated reading can benefit most students throughout elementary school, as well as struggling readers at higher grade levels. Fluency is key to reading achievement. (Chard, Vaughn, & Tyler 2002) It develops because students are given opportunities to practice reading with a high degree of success. They should be reading books at their independent reading level with 95% accuracy. (Allington 2001)

Fluency Fluent readers use decoding skills to quickly read through material to achieve comprehension. They have good vocabulary and they continually make connections with the text and their own background knowledge. (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn 2001)

Fluency continued… Fluent readers focus on and can devote attention to comprehension. Non-fluent readers focus on decoding. Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Fluency develops from practice it is not developmental. It can change depending on vocabulary and the background knowledge the student has. Students need to read and re-read appropriate books at their independent level. Fluency can be very motivating to students.

Fluency continued… Students must hear fluent readers model reading and must be coached to become smooth, expression-filled readers. To determine if a book is the correct level for a student they should be able to read a 100 word passage with 95% accuracy, meaning that they have less than 7 errors in the passage. “Round Robin” reading is not effective. Students only read a small amount of text, only read it once, not the best use of time. (Eldridge, Reutzel and Hollingsworth 1996)

Assessing Fluency DIBELS or AIMSweb 3 Minute Reading Assessments: Word Recognition, Fluency & Comprehension (2205) by Timothy Rasinski & Nancy Padak Just use instructional situations Any passage of about words

GradeFallWinterSpring Oral Reading Rate Norms Source: Adapted from Hasbrouck and Tindal (2006)

Techniques for Developing Reading Fluency Repeated Reading of books with conversation Partner Reading Radio reading Echo Reading, Choral Reading Chunking For beginning readers put phrase slash marks Tape-Assisted Reading Readers’ Theater Timed Reading Read Alouds

Websites for Fluency uency.htm amid/index.htm z.com/guided/fluency.html publications/reading_first1fluency.html cy_2005.pdf

How Much Growth? Fuchs, (1993) GradeRealistic GoalsAmbitious Goals words per week3.0 words per week words per week 2.0 words per week words per week1.5 words per week 4.55 words per week1.1 words per week 5.5 words per week.8 words per week 6.3 words per week.65 words per week

Monitoring Progress 2-3 passages at GOAL or Instructional Level WCPM goal at this time Weekly goal- 2 words a week Goal Period- 10 weeks Draw “aim line” and begin instruction This compares students to themselves rather than grade norms

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