1. Fluency
EDC424

2. What Is Fluency?
Fluency refers to how a person reads orally (out loud). It is thought that oral gives us a gauge on silent reading.
There are many definitions of fluency.
Many people think of fluency as accuracy (how correctly one reads) and rate (how fast one reads), but that’s not all there is to it!

3. Fluency Includes:
Automaticity (reading words effortlessly and automatically, no need to sound out)
Rate (speed/pace of reading)
Accuracy (correctness)
Prosody (phrasing, smoothness)
Intonation (using proper pitch and stress)
Expression (emotion)
Comprehension (understanding reading)

4. What People Might Not Know About Fluency
Fluency is not just related to reading paragraphs, chapters, and other texts.
Fluency involves every process and sub-process of reading:
Letters
Letter sounds
Word patterns
Words
Vocabulary

5. So what is fluency again?
Fluency has three components, two of which we have seen in those models.
Accuracy in word recognition (which comes either through automatic word recognition, through decoding, or through guessing from context, a very risky and cognitively taxing business).
Automaticity in word recognition (which amounts to reading rate)
And prosody, or sound, which includes stress, pitch, and phrasing – what teachers call “reading with expression.”

6. After it is fully developed, reading fluency refers to a level of accuracy and rate where decoding is relatively effortless; where oral reading is smooth and accurate with correct prosody; and where attention can be allocated to comprehension.
Wolf, M., & Katzir-Cohen, T. (2001). Reading fluency and its intervention. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5,
I like this definition because it encompasses both the lower-level and the higher-order processes that are involved with fluency, and it allows us to consider fluency across the span of reading acquisition and into the area of mature reading.

7. Wolf and Katzir-Cohen’s Developmental Definition (p. 219)
In its beginnings, reading fluency is the product of the initial development of accuracy and the subsequent development of automaticity in underlying sublexical processes, lexical processes, and their integration in single word reading and connected text.
I found a really comprehensive definition of fluency in an article by Wolf and Katzir-Cohen on its intervention.
Take a look

8. Fluency requires the child to use phonics and spelling knowledge automatically

9. Fluency requires the child to automatically integrate phonics and spelling knowledge to recognize entire words

10. Fluency requires the child to link recognized words into natural phrases, with appropriate enunciation and emphasis

11. Fluency in Connected Text
(textual)
Fluency at the Word Level
(lexical)
Fluency within Words
(sublexical)

12. Automaticity Theory
Two requirements of reading – automatic word recognition AND constructing meaning
The more energy spent with decoding, the less remaining for meaning construction
Laberge & Samuels (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6,
LaBerge and Samuel’s automaticity theory is almost always cited as a theoretical basis for fluency instruction.
Generally, speaking, as in the Simple View of Reading we considered earlier, automaticity theory holds that there are two components to reading: word recognition and meaning construction. Automaticity theory argues that if neither of those components were automatic (that is, accomplished without expending attention) then the system would be overloaded. LaBerge and Samuels believed that cognition was a limited-resource system, and that energy spent on decoding stole energy from comprehension. They also believed that comprehension processes could not be automated.
So automaticity theory holds that increasing automatic word recognition allows for cognitive energy to be spent on meaning. . . an intuitively attractive idea. The problem with this is that many comprehension processes can be automated and that decoding and comprehension are not totally independent processes.

13. Ages and Stages: Chall’s Model
4. Comprehension of multiple perspectives
3. Comprehension of a single perspective
2. Fluency
1. Phonological recoding
0. Alphabet knowledge
Stage 0
Birth to K
Stage 1
Grades 1 and 2
Stage 2
Grades 2 and 3
Stage 3
Grades 4 to 8
Stage 4
Highschool
Over the last two months we’ve worked to contrast models of skilled reading with models of reading acquisition. Jeanne Chall’s stages cover the range from acquisition to skilled reading. She argued that from birth through the end of kindergarten, readers generally gain alphabet knowledge (and some measure of phonemic awareness) and then in first and second grades they enter a stage of phonological recoding, where their attention is fixed on making the match between letters and sounds and oral language. Then, continuing into third grade they are consolidating and automating that recoding in the fluency stage. For upper elementary and middle school, then, they focus on comprehension, but not really critical literacy, and finally in high school they come to comprehension of a variety of perspectives.
Again, like automaticity theory, this is intuitively attractive. We learn the alphabet, we learn to decode and spell, we gain fluency, and then we focus on attention. However, it seems too rigid. For example, we know that comprehension skills and strategies can and should be taught across the developmental span. .
Chall, J.S. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: MacGraw-Hill.

14. Why is Fluency Important?
Fluency is linked to overall reading ability
Improved comprehension
Improved vocabulary
Increased ability to remember what is read

15. How does fluency contribute to comprehension?
Automaticity theory
Prosody

16. How does fluency contribute to comprehension?
Automaticity theory
accuracy
automaticity
Prosody

17. Fluency and Comprehension
Fluency provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension
Fluency does not guarantee comprehension, but if a reader needs to stop and decode words, reading becomes long and laborious, and meaning can be disrupted
Students who read fluently are able to put their energies into understanding and analyzing what they read.
Each component of fluency is important to comprehension

18. Prosody is comprised of a series of features including pitch or intonation, stress or emphasis, tempo or rate, and the rhythmic patterns of language.

19. Prosody
A woman, without her man, is nothing.

20. Maybe not so Easy to See the Connection Between Prosody and Comprehension
Consider
“I wanted spring. to come I / went out. to find that corner. // I walked. Down the path / in the woods. until // I came to / a corner. I went around the corner. to see // if spring was on. // the other side
-versus-
“I wanted spring to come. I went out to find that corner. I walked down the path in the woods until I came to a corner. I went around the corner to see if spring was on the other side.”

21. Since parsing indicates that the reader can transfer her/his knowledge of speech to text, it can be viewed as an indicator that s/he understands what is being read by maintaining the important features of expressive language.

22. Poor readers are not as prosodic in their reading or as facile with their use of appropriate phrasing as are good readers. This is true for adults as well as for children and adolescents. However, studies indicate that poor readers at all age levels demonstrate improved comprehension when text is presented in a manner comparable to speech; that is when it has been organized into appropriate phrase units for the reader. So to tie these findings back to fluent reading, I would argue that …

23. Walking Across the Bridge:
Fluency
Comprehension
Walking Across the Bridge:
Fluency’s Impact on Comprehension

24. Neurochemistry
Oxytocin is involved in the control of maternal behavior. It is synthesized inside magnocellular neursecretory cells as a precursor protein that is processed by proteolysis to its shorter active peptide form. Specific parts of the brain such as the supraoptic nucleus produce oxytocin which acts on cells in locations such as the ventral pallidum to produce the behavioral effects of oxytocin.

25. Let’s take something easier …
We didn’t understand that not because of fluency, but because we don’t know anything about neurochemistry!
Let’s take something easier …

27. Why such a connection? We have limited cognitive attention
Attention taken up with decoding (sounding out words), prosody (figuring out punctuation, etc.), and intonation/expression takes up valuable cognitive attention
Leaves less attention left over to truly analyze and create meaning from the text

28. Four components of good fluency instruction
Model fluent reading
Use guided repeated oral reading instruction.
Give students ways to practice and perform.
Implement word study activities to build accuracy and automaticity.

29. Ideas for Improving Fluency

30. Important Points Not all students need fluency instruction!!
Fluency instruction usually begins in the middle of first grade.
Transitional readers/within word pattern spellers
Online resources:
units/fluency.htm

31. Model fluent reading
Students need to see and hear what fluent reading sounds like.
Ways to Model:
Read Aloud: An adult reads aloud a text to the whole class.
Books on Tape: Children can listen to stories on tape as they follow along in a book.
Buddy Reading: An upper grade child reads aloud to a lower grade child.

32. Guided repeated oral reading instruction
Choral Reading: All students, lead by the teacher, read aloud together.
Peer/Paired Reading: Students work as pairs. Each student reads their text silently. Then the students take turns reading the passage three times orally to the other student. The listening student acts as the teacher by giving suggestions and feedback.
Echo Reading: The teacher reads a sentence, paragraph, or page aloud and then has the students chorally reread that segment.

33. More suggestions for guided repeated oral reading instruction
Tape Assisted Reading: Students listen and read along with a tape.
Buddy Reading: An upper grade student listens to a lower grade student read, giving appropriate feedback.
Phrase Reading: Teacher and students break text into short phrases that match speech pauses (natural chunking) and reread until fluent

34. Lots of practice & performance
Repeated Reading:
Short passages ( words, depending upon grade); poems and rhymes are great for repeated reading
Teacher models reading the passage fluently
Teacher discusses reading behaviors such as phrasing, rate, intonation, etc.
Students practice reading the text several times until fluency has developed.
Often times the teacher has students work in pairs
One student reads text the first time while other student times rate with a stopwatch and records expression, prosody, and accuracy on a rating sheet. Students switch.
Students practice reading with their partner throughout the week
Students time and use rating sheet again at end of week.

35. Lots of practice & performance
Independent Reading: Children choose text on their independent level to read silently.
Reader's Theater: Oral performance (reading) of scripts usually based on authentic literature. In order to “perform” their script, students need to interpret the meaning (to use expression, etc.) and read and re-read to gain fluency.

36. Lots of practice & performance
Fluency practice in literacy centers
Listening Center: Listen to books on tape.
Poetry Center: Copy and read poems.
Song Center: Read and sing songs.
Recording Center: Read a story on tape.

37. Word Study Help students recognize words automatically
Build sight word knowledge
Work on decoding and patterns
Ideas to increase accuracy and automaticity
Speed drills
Flashcard practice
Word Walls
Sight Word games
Vocabulary Activities (from Text Talk, for example)

38. NAEP FLUENCY SCALE 4
Large and meaningful phrase groupings. Preserves author’s syntax and includes expressive interpretation. 3
Three- and four-word phrases. Mostly appropriate and preserving syntax. Little or no expressive interpretation. 2
Two-word phrases. Occasional larger groupings, but awkward and unrelated to larger context. 1
Word by word. Occasional two-word or three-word phrases.
One successful attempt to go beyond rate and measure prosody is the fluency scale constructed for the oral reading portion of the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. You’ll see that fluency is defined as phrasing. However, in the NAEP study, reading rates for readers at levels 1 and 2 were much lower than rates for students reading at levels 3 and 4.
This scale is useful for considering oral reading fluency in schools. It is probably best to record the children’s oral reading and apply the scale that way until teachers are comfortable with it and can agree upon the scorings. In fact, that would be a great activity for coaches to use with teachers as they are contrast oral reading accuracy with a fuller definition of fluency.

39. Guided Oral Reading But why can’t we just do what we’ve always done
Round Robin Oral Reading
One robust finding in research reviews is that guided oral reading improves fluency. But guided oral reading is defined in many different ways.
Many teachers tend to view oral reading fluency development as synonymous with Round Robin Oral reading.
Why do you think that teachers gravitate toward RR?
Steve Stahl took a strong stance against this practice; although it may be somewhat effective in fluency development, it is likely to be much less effective than alternative practices. Observational studies indicate that (much to teachers’ disbelief) other children are not anxiously following along – in fact, it is impossible to follow along directly. Mostly children are reading ahead, trying to find their next spot, or simply daydreaming. At any rate, children only definitely read what they read out loud and overall engagement is low.
Teachers also tend to argue that RR allows them to provide necessary feedback and scaffolding for children during reading. While this is theoretically possible, observational studies again suggest that it is rare. What teachers do during RR is tell children words.
In lieu of those two findings, round robin is simply inefficient. Instructional time is wasted.
So let’s turn to what teachers can do instead.
Each child reads too little;
Engagement is low
Instructional time is wasted
Teacher-provided
feedback is of low quality

40. Four Simple Alternatives
Choral
Reading
The teacher leads the entire class or group reading aloud in unison.
Echo
The teacher reads a sentence and then the class rereads it aloud.
Partner
Pairs of readers alternate reading aloud by a set protocol.
Whisper Reading
Each child reads aloud (but not in unison) in a quiet voice.
If we are to end the practice of round robin, we must replace it with practices that are manageable. Here are four practices that are basic to most fluency-building systems. None are perfect, but all increase the amount of reading compared to RR.
In choral reading, the teacher is leading the children in reading in unison. The important thing here is that the teacher’s reading rate is reasonable given the children’s age and stage. The teacher’s voice is providing some support, but she is not reading at a normal adult fluent rate.
In echo reading, the teacher reads solo a or sentence or page of text, and then the class repeats in unison. Echo reading provides slightly less support than choral reading.
In partner reading, two children are reading to one another with some system for alternating: sometimes one child reads a page and the other rereads it; sometimes they take turns at the paragraph or page break.
In whisper reading, each child reads the text to him or herself, but not in unison. This is the least supportive practice, but it also provides the most text reading and the maximum challenge.
How common are these practices? If they are new, how are teachers responding?

41. How should we measure fluency?
Fuchs, L. S. Fuchs, D., Hosp, M.K., & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Scientific Studies of Reading, 5,
Good, R. H., Simmons, D.C. & Kame’enui, E.J. (2001). The importance of decision-making utility of a continuum of fluency-based indicators of foundational reading skills for third-grade high-stakes outcomes. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5,
If fluency is important, we should have strategies for measuring it.
Traditionally, we have tended to measure oral reading accuracy and oral or silent reading comprehension.
Informal reading inventories
Standardized tests
Running records
Now we are focusing much more attention on automaticity measures and on measures of reading rate.
This makes good sense; while oral reading accuracy is related to reading comprehension for first and second graders, beginning in third grade it isn’t. Imagine a school-level data set that included accuracy percentages on a grade level passage. Many more children would appear to be on target (accuracy > 90%) than would really be on target; some would read so slowly that they would be unable to comprehend. A child reading at 90% and 50 wpm is really different than a child reading at 90% and 90 wpm. Oral reading rate is related to comprehension across the developmental span.