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6 Ways to Teach Alphabet Letters & Sounds

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Free PRINTABLE DOWNLOADS & RESOURCES

The reading fluency activities on this page are essential for children with dyslexia and struggling readers. These activities can be taught in the classroom (small and large group setting) and can also be implemented at home! Keep checking this page for more free printable reading fluency activities and other ways to increase reading fluency!

READING FLUENCY ACTIVITIES: CLASSROOM THAT SUPPORT READING FLUENCY

By enlarging this template you can help students learn and remember important self-check strategies when reading. We have found that it is beneficial to add objects to each strategy!

Increase a child's reading fluency at the word level while they take turns "reading" and being the "listener". Open the above template for complete directions and materials needed. This is a great activity for reading centers!

Print and cut apart the strips to help children practice punctuation fluency by using letters of the alphabet.

Use this parent friendly homework log to help your students practice reading fluency using the repeated reading method at home. Repeated Reading is one of our favorite reading fluency activities because it is so effective.

Help children understand and recognize common prefixes and suffixes by cutting out and laminating the above cards. Provide children with opportunities to locate these in words. Reading fluency activities that explicitly teach prefixes and suffixes are important for increasing reading fluency.

Using the same premise as mentioned on the Reading Fluency Page in " Repeated Readings", students can receive feedback and guidance reading appropriate text from their peers. One student plays the "reader" and the other is the "listener". The teacher sets a timer for a desired amount of time and after the first trial, the listener provides feedback to the reader. After the second and third trials, the listener is responsible for checking off the reading behaviors that the reader demonstrated. NOTE: This reading fluency activity must be explicitly modeled by the teacher before students can do this independently.

Reader's Theater helps students become fluent readers! The repeated readings necessary to prepare for play, both silent and oral, help students gain confidence with the selected play text. Choral readings, rehearsals, and readings at home with family members all create great reading opportunities. (Carson-Dellosa's "Act It Out with Reader's Theater" Series are great because the speaking parts in each play can be acted with students at different reading levels).

When reading rhyming poetry, children may use the predictable patterns to help them get a sense of when it is appropriate to pause between phrases. Rhyming poetry appeals to children of all ages, and is therefore a good choice for developing reading fluency from kindergarten through fifth grade. For more information about rhyming, go to the Phonemic Awareness Activities Page.

Students should be given opportunities to practice reading fluency with letters, words, and phrases that can be found in the classroom. (Not just the print found in books!) During reading centers, students are able to walk around independently to "read the room". Pocket charts and hanging posters are located throughout and are kept at eye level. Empty laundry baskets are great places to keep rolled up poems and songs previously learned.

One of children's favorite reading fluency activities are practicing with short phrases. Repeated reading of phrases gives students practice reading decodable and non-decodable words with fluency. The short phrases may be written on sentence strips for the small group setting or used for a reading center activity. Click on the following links to print off these short phrases:

Print, cut, and laminate the "People Reading" cards. Using the "Short Fluency Phrases" located above, have students pull out a "people" card. They must read the short phrase to represent the person that was drawn. Have the student pull out 2-3 more "people" cards to use with the same short phrase. Our kids love reading fluency activities like this!

Print, laminate and place these cards with the "Short Fluency Phrases" used above. Purchase one Lego set for each child that will be reading and have a stopwatch handy. The idea of this game is to to finish your Lego creation before anyone else does! ("Lego Bionicles" seem to work best and they only have 30-50 pieces. Check the Lego sets for the appropriate age of the children you are working with!)
How to Play:

When a child reads a "Short Fluency Phrase" correctly (with good expression too!) they get to take one piece to make their creation. A child can also add 4 Legos if they pull out the, "Add 4 Legos to Your Creation" card or if they pull out the, "One Minute to Work" card.

If someone pulls out the, "Take a Lego Away From a Partner" card, they must take a Lego away from their partner. If someone has taken your Lego from you, the only way to get it back to to pull out a "Add 4 Legos to Your Creation" card!

This game might take a while if played until someone has finished their Lego creation. If you are working with a small group of children, a good idea would be to place finished Legos in a plastic bag until another day when the game can resume.

The above documents are used to encourage reading at home. Students are given a form to take home (on a needed basis). A list of the books read is written down, along with how the book was read. Students are encouraged to read any of the following six ways: Independently, with a parent, shared, paired, choral, and/or echo reading. A paper clip is linked together (to form 'The Reading Web') for each book that is read at home. The more books that are read at home, the bigger the web gets!

On small cards, write some common decodable and non-decodable words depending upon the needs of your students. Place these in a container along with 10-15 cards that say, "Oh No!" Have students read each card as they pull them out. If they are read correctly, the student gets to keep them. When an "Oh No!" card is pulled out, the child must put all of their cards back in the container. The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.

Each day students practice 5-10 words that are kept on a metal ring. Words are chosen for each student by the teacher. When the student is able to successfully read the word without any help, a tally mark is given. Once ten tallies are on a word card, it is taken off. Students have a special binder labeled, "Words I Can Read". Ring Words that are taken off are written down in this binder and then glued on the above template to take home to share with their families. Students get very excited when they are able to take their words home!

Return from Reading Fluency Activities Page to Reading Fluency Page

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Free Reading Fluency Activities To Improve Reading Fluency

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Browse Sight Word Games. Award winning educational materials designed to help kids succeed. Start for free now!

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We love learning phonics with hands-on activities and games! Click on each image to get to the blog post, where you can download the activity for FREE. This page contains affiliate links. Related post: How to teach the alphabet to preschoolers Related post: What are phonological and phonemic awareness?

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Printable Rhyming Activities for Kids - This Reading Mama

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Looking for some printable rhyming activities for your toddler, preschooler, Kindergartner, first grader, or even an English learner? You’ll find what you need in this rhyming word collection! You can read all about rhyming words and their importance. *This post contains affiliate links. Printable…

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Letter Recognition and Letter Sound Activitites

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How to improve fluency at school and home

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Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately. Their reading is smooth and has expression.

Children who do not read with fluency sound choppy and awkward. Those students may have difficulty with decoding skills or they may just need more practice with speed and smoothness in reading. Fluency is also important for motivation; children who find reading laborious tend not to want read! As readers head into upper elementary grades, fluency becomes increasingly important. The volume of reading required in the upper elementary years escalates dramatically. Students whose reading is slow or labored will have trouble meeting the reading demands of their grade level.

What the problem looks like

A kid's perspective: What this feels like to me

Children will usually express their frustration and difficulties in a general way, with statements like "I hate reading!" or "This is stupid!". But if they could, this is how kids might describe how fluency difficulties in particular affect their reading:

I just seem to get stuck when I try to read a lot of the words in this chapter.

It takes me so long to read something.

Reading through this book takes so much of my energy, I can't even think about what it means.

A parent's perspective: What I see at home

Here are some clues for parents that a child may have problems with fluency:

He knows how to read words but seems to take a long time to read a short book or passage silently.

She reads a book with no expression.

He stumbles a lot and loses his place when reading something aloud.

She reads aloud very slowly.

She moves her mouth when reading silently (subvocalizing).

A teacher's perspective: What I see in the classroom

Here are some clues for teachers that a student may have problems with fluency:

Her results on words-correct-per-minute assessments are below grade level or targeted benchmark.

She has difficulty and grows frustrated when reading aloud, either because of speed or accuracy.

He does not read aloud with expression; that is, he does not change his tone where appropriate.

She does not "chunk" words into meaningful units.

When reading, he doesn't pause at meaningful breaks within sentences or paragraphs.

How to help

With the help of parents and teachers, kids can learn strategies to cope with fluency issues that affect his or her reading. Below are some tips and specific things to do.

What kids can do to help themselves

Track the words with your finger as a parent or teacher reads a passage aloud. Then you read it.

Have a parent or teacher read aloud to you. Then, match your voice to theirs.

Read your favorite books and poems over and over again. Practice getting smoother and reading with expression.

What parents can do to help at home

Support and encourage your child. Realize that he or she is likely frustrated by reading.

Check with your child's teachers to find out their assessment of your child's word decoding skills.

If your child can decode words well, help him or her build speed and accuracy by:

Reading aloud and having your child match his voice to yours

Having your child practice reading the same list of words, phrase, or short passages several times

Reminding your child to pause between sentences and phrases

Read aloud to your child to provide an example of how fluent reading sounds.

Give your child books with predictable vocabulary and clear rhythmic patterns so the child can "hear" the sound of fluent reading as he or she reads the book aloud.

Use books on tapes; have the child follow along in the print copy.

What teachers can do to help at school

Assess the student to make sure that word decoding or word recognition is not the source of the difficulty (if decoding is the source of the problem, decoding will need to be addressed in addition to reading speed and phrasing).

Give the student independent level texts that he or she can practice again and again. Time the student and calculate words-correct-per-minute regularly. The student can chart his or her own improvement.

Ask the student to match his or her voice to yours when reading aloud or to a tape recorded reading.

Read a short passage and then have the student immediately read it back to you.

Have the student practice reading a passage with a certain emotion, such as sadness or excitement, to emphasize expression and intonation.

Incorporate timed repeated readings into your instructional repertoire.

Plan lessons that explicitly teach students how to pay attention to clues in the text (for example, punctuation marks) that provide information about how that text should be read.

More information

Find out more about fluency issues with these resources:

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Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately.

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Sight Word Printables

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See and Say Method

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This worksheet incorporates phonics and rhyming. Each correct response has the same ending sound as the others.

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Students can practice the concept of the game on their own, except they will begin with the word sound and associate the letter

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A game to be played to introduce how letters make up the words they know

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Pass the Sound Relay Race: Classroom Phonics Game

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A whisper relay-race! Teams compete to pass a letter sound down the line of players.

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Oral Assessment

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Two or more words that have the same or similar ending sounds.

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Understanding What Phonological Awareness is

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Letter Printing Practice

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Letter Recognition Worksheet

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Letter Recognition Practice