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Reading Worksheets, Spelling, Grammar, Comprehension, Lesson Plans

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As the importance of fluency in reading ability has been recognized more educators are including a fluency component in their reading education programs. There are a number of best practices for helping children develop reading fluency.
Modeling
Adult modeling is essential for helping students, especially those in the elementary grades, develop fluency. Many young readers do not intuit the pace at which they must read to comprehend a text. Similarly, expression and phrasing may not be readily apparent to them. This is why it is important that adults read aloud to children using appropriate phrasing, expression and pacing. When we model these aspects of reading for children they begin to develop an understanding not only of the ways that they can use fluency in their own reading, but also the importance of it for reading comprehension.

Teachers and parents should employ a wide variety of high interest texts in different genres for modeling fluency. While the greatest impact on fluency is seen when adults model it with younger children, read alouds should not be restricted to the elementary grades. Middle and high school aged students, especially those with reading difficulties, continue to benefit from fluency modeling through adult read alouds.
Sight Words Instruction
A strong foundation in basic vocabulary is one of the primary components of fluency. Because fluency depends on a reader's ability to quickly and accurately decode words, sight word instruction has a significant and beneficial effect on this aspect of reading. Sight words make up between 50 and 70% of all words in children's literature. When a young reader is able to efficiently move through this percentage of the words on a page, he is fluency and comprehension rates increase. Therefore sight word instruction is essential to improving a reader's fluency.
Oral Reading Strategies for Increasing Fluency Guided Oral Reading
Guided oral reading is an excellent tool for improving fluency. This strategy benefits children in developing accuracy and word recognition skills, two of the components of fluency. In this activity, an adult works one-on-one with a child. The child reads a text that is at or slightly above her independent reading level aloud with the adult guiding her. The role of the adult is not to constantly correct the child's oral reading, but to guide her in applying appropriate strategies for comprehending the text. For example, if the reader comes to an unfamiliar word the adult can encourage her to use phonics to sound out each phoneme in and then to blend these together to create the entire word. Similarly, if a child is reading with little expression, the adult can ask her guiding questions about the sort of emotional associations she might have with certain words to help her elicit these when reading aloud.
Repetitive Oral Reading
Repetitive oral reading is a strategy for improving a reader's fluency as well as his vocabulary. Like guided oral reading, repetitive reading is conducted one-on-one. The adult should select a text that is at least 50 words long and is at or slightly above the child's independent reading level. The child reads the selection aloud several times with the adult providing guiding feedback focusing on different elements of fluency each time the text is read. Each time the child reads the piece his fluency should increase. By the final reading he should be able to read the passage aloud at an appropriate rate of fluency. Repetitive oral reading does not have to be only an adult-child activity. Teachers can pair children together for repetitive oral reading practice. When choosing student pairs teachers should consider student personalities as well as reading abilities. Generally, children with low fluency rates should be paired with compassionate students who are at or above grade level in their fluency.
Choral Reading
Choral reading is another beneficial one-on-one oral reading activity for children. For this activity the paired readers sit close together with a single copy of the text. The two read the text aloud with the adult (or stronger student reader) reading it at a slightly faster rate than the other. As the pair reads the adult (or stronger student reader) should track the words on the page with a finger to help the other reader follow along. This encourages child to focus her attention on the words on the page.
Readers' Theatre
Readers' theatre is an excellent whole class or small group activity for improving fluency. In readers' theatre the readers "perform" a dramatic script using only their voices. While there are many texts specifically designed to be used for readers' theatre (a good number are available online) any piece of drama may be used. Students are assigned roles in the play and are given an opportunity to silently read over the script. Then they read it aloud focusing on fluency. The teacher should guide students in using appropriate pacing, expression and phrasing. Readers' theatre is most beneficial when the script is read aloud several times because this gives the readers multiple opportunities to practice reading it fluently. This strategy is particularly useful in developing the prosody component of fluency.
Silent Reading Strategies for Increasing Fluency Silent Sustained Reading (SSR)
While most strategies for improving fluency are conducted orally and cooperatively, one of the most beneficial, silent sustained reading is performed silently and independently. In silent sustained reading or SSR children spend a pre-selected amount of time silently reading texts that they have chosen. The goal of this activity is to give them opportunities to engage in pleasurable, sustained reading. It is important that children are able to select what they read during this activity because choice increases their motivation and ability to focus. It is also essential that the SSR period be uninterrupted. Fluency increases when a reader is given the time to "get into" a text.
Audiobooks
Audiobooks provide an excellent bridge between decoding and comprehension for struggling readers. Children who are reluctant to read or who have particularly low rates of fluency benefit from hearing a text read aloud while following along in a print version of it. When they hear the book these children pick up on the speed and prosody appropriate to the reading task and are able to accurately identify more words. The audiobook serves as a positive fluency model for the reader .

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As the importance of fluency in reading ability has been recognized more educators are including a fluency component in their reading education programs. There are a number of best practices for helping children develop reading fluency. Modeling Adult modeling is essential for helping students, especially those in the elementary grades, develop fluency.

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We have all heard about the shift that happens, usually between second and third grade, when students (should) go from learning to read to reading to learn. Unfortunately, for some students, their ability to read to learn is stifled by their inability to read fluently. Even for those kids who can read at an average pace, the faster and more accurately they can read and decode, the more effectively they can comprehend.

When I taught third grade, and now as an interventionist, the importance of fluency is empathized more than ever (and has definitely met some critics). I know that fluency is NOT the end-all, be-all, but a lot of research proves that it is important, and a lot of schools are trending toward fluency being a high priority. I have compiled a list of some of the resources and strategies I have used when teaching in the regular education classroom and as an interventionist.I hope they can help you in some way.This isn't a blog post about what fluency IS, but about ways to improve it.Some of the ideas are FREE, and a few of them are links to specific paid resources that I have tested in my classroom.I get nothing in return for posting about these (my Mountain View state-Colorado-doesn't allow Amazon Affiliates), so they are simply products that I have used and believe in.

I know what you're thinking-this is obvious.Yes, to some this may be inherent.But, when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING-do you have a student read your morning message out loud, or do you do it?Do you have a student read the daily math problems out loud, or do you do it?Do you have a student read the directions for an assignment out loud, or do you do it?If you have been the one reading everything, STOP!For kids in grades 2 and up, they should be able to read all of the directions, all of the math problems, everything.I know this sounds silly, but consider all the reading you do to your students in a day while explaining something-or all the reading that they may do in their head when you could have a student reading it out loud.If a student only read one extra sentence out loud each day by implementing this, that's an extra 185 sentences read out loud over the course of a year.Worth it to me! (Counter Argument: Some teachers mention that the students need to hear examples of fluent reading, and yes, yes, yes I agree!That is what read aloud time is for.)

Update: I now have a FREE download that includes the above anchor chart! Download it for FREE HERE!

Have you discovered the Super Speed games from Whole Brain Teaching?They have them for a variety of different fluency (math and reading) skills, but the one I love for reading fluency is Super Speed 1,000 .It's a free download, and it's AMAZING!The kids practice the 1,000 most common sight words in a lightning fast game that takes three minutes a day once the students understand how to play.I will warn you-this can get loud, and loud is uncomfortable for me!I like a serenely peaceful classroom...I had an administrator walk in one day during Super Speed time, and I felt that pit in my stomach-it was so loud, she would think I wasn't managing my classroom.As she walked around and saw the enthusiasm of these kids reading their sight words, she praised the program and then shared the link with the staff at the next weekly meeting.I have used Super Speed for second through fifth graders, in every setting you can imagine.I highly recommend it!

is a freevoice recording software you can download onto just about any computer (You could use any voice recording software for this).Every week, one of our fluency centers is Audacity.The students practice a passage out of their current novel three times.Then, they record themselves reading it out loud on Audacity.They listen back, while reading the page in their head.Then, they take notes on what they noticed about their reading (How was their prosody?Attention to punctuation? Did the dialogue sound authentic?).They find 2 glows and a grow, and then on their next read, they focus on their "grow" area.They record it again and listen back.The process continues until they are ready to submit it to me.This year, I have them save it to a public folder that I can access, but in years past, they have posted it to a classroom wiki to keep track of their growth-and parents can log in and listen to their reading from the wiki, too.

Poetry is one of my favorite fluency practices, and the students always feel the same way!There are so many wonderful ideas out there about how to use poems to boost fluency, so I won't delve into that too much.Rather, I'll share how we keep track of our poems.

At a garage sale a few years ago, I picked up a class set of My Dog Does My Homework, an anthology of fun kid poems.I can't find a place to buy it, but you could do the same activity with any anthology of poems or a website like www.poetry4kids.com .Each students has a copy of the anthology and the goal is to read through the book-five times.We focus on one or two poems each week, where I model great fluency, then we do some choral reading as a class, then they work on them during their literacy stations.As they read the poems (in any order they want to), they mark down the date that they read it.They can read the same poem five times in one day, or they can read five different poems on one day.

Okay, I know I keep saying things like, "this is my favorite" or "it's amazing," but this one is a favorite and amazing and fun and engaging and etc. etc. etc. These are books that are similar to a Reader's Theatre, but they are shorter, rhymed and rhythmic, giving each student a part to read, and then a common part that they must read together.Again, a favorite when I put them into a reading fluency station, and really not a bad price.There are five of them, and they will last you an entire year.You can get them on HERE on Amazon for $6 each (affiliate link). So worth it!

During my intervention groups in 3 rd and 4 th grade, I discovered a great need for fluency practice that was more than just words or phrases and less than paragraph passages (although both are absolutely important).So, I began creating fluency task cards.They include short (2-3 sentences) statements for students to focus on fluency.The first set I made is a general set-includes reading dialogue, appositives, punctuation, etc.The second set I made focuses on prefixes and suffixes (once kids can unlock the "code" of prefixes and suffixes, they make oral reading fluency growth rapidly).The students beg to do these in small group, and they even love to rate their fluency each time they read them.
Update 7/24/17: Ever since I created these fluency task cards back in 2012, I have continued to create them. My students love them SO much. I have used them in both an intervention setting and a classroom setting, and I can't ever imagine having a classroom without them! I use them in centers, for a quick practice, for homework, for early finishers, for morning work, etc. I now have a seasonal set for every month of the school year as well as sets for different reading skills. You can read more about how I ORGANIZE these task cards HERE.

Six Minute Solution is a program to help students improve their reading fluency in 6 minutes a day.It's expensive, but it works.This program really focuses on reading rate, as opposed to prosody, but I have seen immense benefit.The premise is this: the students read a leveled passage for one minute, three times daily.They have a partner who reads along with them, recording errors and stopping points.The partner also reads three times (they flip flop who is reading each turn), hence the 6 minutes.In reality, it takes about 8-10 minutes to have them read and mark their graphs, so I typically only did it three days a week.

If you can't afford the Six Minute Solution, there are a lot of leveled CBMs on TpT that are more affordable (Think: Jen Jones at Hello Literacy).Whip up some graphs so that students can track their progress, them implement it.Here is what I have adapted implementation to look like... this is NOT exactly what the Solution prescribes, but it is what worked for me in a whole-class setting.

Day 1 of new passage ONLY:

2 Minutes: Silent Read Passage & Confer with partner about unfamiliar words

1 Minute: Cold Read (Students are all reading their passage orally and record their cold read time on a graph)

1 Minute: One partner reads orally while the other partner reads along silently and marks mistakes and stopping point.After the one minute mark, the reader marks the rate on the graph.

1 Minute: Second partner reads orally while the other partner reads along silently and marks mistakes and stopping point.Mark rate on graph.

Repeat three times, for a total of 6 readings between partners

I love the !Free, research-based, easy prep, and easy for differentiation-there are also many resources that are perfect for tier 1 and tier 2 reading intervention groups. At the beginning of the year, I was using second & third grade materials for my fourth graders in intervention and for my third graders in TAG. As an interventionist, I created binders full of all the resources so that teachers could easily grab them and copy them as needed.I was shocked at how many teachers had never heard of the site, and I am so glad these binders (which admittedly took hours to put together) have gotten a great deal of use out of them!

Need I say more? I feel like so much has been said about Reader's Theatre in the teaching world that I would be remiss to not mention it, but I also feel like I don't have anything truly new and revolutionary to add to it. If you haven't used Reader's Theatre, do it! It is THE perfect end of the year activity!

In the intermediate grades, morning meeting looks a little bit different than in the primary grades.Our morning messages are different, our greetings are different, our activities are different.One activity I implemented was book talks.Every students signed up one a week (give or take) to do a one minute book talk and to read a one minute passage out of the book.They practiced it at home and then presented in the classroom.If a student was reading an exceptionally long book, they might end up presenting on it two or three times, which was fine.My kids really loved this, and it encouraged them to always have a book they were reading outside of the classroom!

Well, that's it!I hope that you can implement some of these ideas into your classroom tomorrow, and maybe you will implement some at the beginning of next year.Be sure to check out the links below for more blog posts on fluency!

*If you have a blog post that gives a great tip or trick for increasing oral reading fluency (paid product mentions ok, but no direct product links, please), I invite you to link up your blog post here.*

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We have all heard about the shift that happens, usually between second and third grade, when students (should) go from learning to read to reading to learn. Unfortunately, for some students, their ability to read to learn is stifled by their inability to read fluently.

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Definition

The National Reading Panel (NRP) defined fluency as the ability to read orally with sufficient accuracy and speed, plus appropriate expression and identified fluency as one of the five essential components of reading instruction.

The Literacy How Reading Wheel does not include fluency as a separate component; instead, the accuracy and automaticity dimension of fluency is regarded as a critical ingredient for each of the other reading components. Fluent performance is more easily achieved and measured for lower-level subskills such as phonics. However, reading fluency is influenced by the development of rapid rates of processing in all the components of reading, including the higher-order processes of comprehension such as inferring and integrating information. A lack of rapid processing in any one of these areas can interfere with text comprehension.

Research-What We Know About Fluency

Fluency is essential to the learning process. According to Wolf (2001), fluency directly contributes to three critical learning outcomes:

Retention: the ability to perform a skill or to recall knowledge long after formal learning/training has ended
Stamina: the ability to maintain performance levels for extended periods of time
Generalization: the ability to combine and apply what has been learned to perform more complex tasks creatively and in new situations.

Fluent readers are better able to comprehend because they process information quickly (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974).

Oral reading rate and accuracy (i.e., fluency) are closely related to reading comprehension (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2005).

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, 2003).

Fluency ... should be part and parcel of how we teach reading and how we teach teachers of reading. In other words we should be as explicit in how we help a child learn to read fluently, as we are in teaching a child to decode a word accurately (Wolf, 2003).

Recommended Articles

Adams, M.J. (2011). Technology for developing children's language and literacy: Bringing speech recognition to the classroom. New York, NY: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

Hasbrouck, J. (2006). Drop everything and read-But how?: For students who are not yet fluent, silent reading is not the best use of classroom time. American Educator 30(2), Summer 2006.

Hudson, R.F., et al. (2009). The complex nature of reading fluency: A multidimensional view. Reading & Writing Quarterly 25: 4-32.

Hudson, R.F. et al. (May 2005). Reading fluency assessment and instruction: What, why, and how? The Reading Teacher 58, 702-714.

Pikulski, J.J. & Chard, D.J. (March 2005). Fluency: Bridge between decoding and reading comprehension. The Reading Teacher 58, 510-519.

Wolf, M. New research on an old problem: A brief history of fluency. Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/.

Tips for Empowered Teaching-What We Do to Teach Fluency

Practice is the key to any instruction designed to improve fluency. The more a skill is reviewed, the more quickly and easily the skill can be performed. But it's important to focus on the right type of practice. Try these suggestions for developing fluency for any type of skill:

Practice for short periods of time.
Repeated reading of texts is effective especially when there is a different focus (e.g., accuracy, automaticity, prosody) each time the passage is read.
Emphasize the importance of reading words accurately and with proper expression. The goal is to read fast enough to make meaning.
Practice daily and keep a graphic record of progress, which is very motivating for students!

Practice scooping words in grammatical phrases in connected text to support prosody. Use an ice cream scoop or pointer when modeling and have students follow along with their pencils. One criteria for fluent reading is the ability to group words into grammatical entities to promote proper intonation. This practice supports students who read word by word rather than grouping into subject and predicate phrases. Many students benefit from explicit instruction in this technique that not only addresses dysfluent reading but also teaches students about sentence structure.

When reading fluency shows little improvement, check the fluency of the various subskills that contribute to overall fluency. Results indicate that intervention programs that address multiple components of the reading process simultaneously (e.g. vocabulary, syntax, phonology) produce promising results, especially for students with rapid naming deficits (Norton & Wolf, 2011). RAVE-O (Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary, Engagement with Language and Orthography; Wolf et al., 2009) is one such example.

Too many non-fluent skills piled on top of each other create a sense of being overloaded and ultimately lead to anxiety, which further interferes with the learning process (Binder, Haughton & Bateman, 2002).

Prosody is a relatively strong indicator of how well a student comprehends the text being read (Miller & Schwanenflugel, 2006). Directing students to read with expression is one way to encourage them to focus on meaning. To the extent that comprehension processes are relatively automatic, word reading fluency will be improved.

Take a word or phrase walk in lieu of a picture walk if a teaching objective includes reading text fluently (i.e., accurately and automatically with proper phrasing). Instead of looking at pictures to make a prediction, students read words and phrases from the text to activate prior knowledge about the topic. This technique does two things: first, it gives students an opportunity to practice reading words that are integral to comprehension. Second, it focuses students' attention on some words and phrases that may be difficult to decode or understand. See this for "Whale," the poem used for scooping above.

Practice fluency with a fluency chart like the one shown or create one using this

Check out this list of books for building fluency for beginning readers.

Try a familiar nonfiction text, such as Scholastic's The Pledge of Allegiance, to encourage older students to read with expression, rather than recite by rote.

Links

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is fluency important for reading proficiency? Fluency, also referred to as automaticity, refers to performing a skill without thinking about all of the steps involved. Reading proficiency requires automaticity of many sub-skills including: naming letters automatically, knowing the most common letter-sound correspondences for all 26 letters, and blending these sounds to read real and nonsense words (an indicator that students have automatized these correspondences). By the time a student reaches the middle of first grade, s/he is expected to read first grade text at a pace that supports thinking about the text to promote comprehension.

What should the focus be for students who need reading fluency practice? When you administer an Oral Reading Fluency measure, be sure to analyze the results on three levels:

his Accuracy (i.e., words correct per minute). This score identifies whether the student is reading the text at an independent level (98-100% accuracy), and instructional level (90-97% accuracy) or a frustration level (below 90% accuracy).
Reading rate (i.e., the number of words a student reads per minute). Both 1 and 2 are objective measures calculated based on words correct per minute.
Prosody (i.e., phrasing and intonation). This is a subjective measure that assesses the student's expression while reading. See t fluency rubric.

What is the relationship between fluency and comprehension? The exact nature of the relationship between reading fluency and comprehension is not completely understood. One view suggests that automaticity of lower-level skills allows students to allocate limited processing capacity to higher-level comprehension demands. A student who struggles to read individual words has little attention left for comprehending and remembering the text. In contrast, the interactive model of reading proposes that higher-level processes are initiated simultaneously, rather than awaiting the completion of lower ones. This view offers the possibility that the relationship between reading fluency and comprehension may be reciprocal. Thus, a reader with poor word recognition ability may be able to use higher-level comprehension skills to compensate for weakness in foundational skills, and their reading fluency would be a reflection of comprehension ability rather than an indication of competence in basic reading skills.

How does processing speed impact fluency? Global processing speed, the ability to quickly process information, impacts how efficiently all the subskills involved in reading can be coordinated. The relationship between rapid automatic naming (RAN) - that is, rapid naming of letters or numbers - and global processing speed is not entirely clear. Some consider RAN to be one facet of global naming speed, while others believe that RAN makes a separate contribution to reading fluency (Hudson et al., 2009). Regardless, it is well-established that slow naming speed is linked to difficulty in developing reading fluency (Pham, Fine, and Semrud-Clikeman, 2011; Thomsen et al., 2005).

Assessments to Inform Instruction

Use fluency-based measures to assess reading proficiency and to predict reading outcomes. Clearly, there is a qualitative difference between readers who can read accurately, but painfully slowly, and those who can read both accurately and effortlessly. For this reason, it is important that assessments not only use accuracy criteria to measure mastery, but instead use measures that are sensitive to the appropriate combination of accuracy plus speed.

Reading fluency is widely measured and is often used as an indicator of overall reading competence. Research supports the strong predictive relationship between oral reading fluency of connected text and comprehension, especially in the elementary grades. However, as reading skills develop, the value of oral reading fluency for predicting comprehension diminishes.

Measures that calculate words correct per minute: Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS Next) Oral Reading Fluency; AIMS Web; Easy CBM

An additional well-acknowledged aspect of text reading fluency is prosody (reading with expression). Since measuring prosody reliably and efficiently is more difficult than measuring accuracy and speed, prosody is not always emphasized when assessing fluency. For example, the most common fluency measure WCPM (words correct per minute) does not include any information about prosody. Use this rubric to measure fluency.

Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) ability is an important factor in determining the risk for reading difficulty in young children, as well as determining the most appropriate reading instruction/intervention. The Rapid Automatized Naming and Rapid Alternating Stimulus Tests (RAN/RAS) (Wolf & Denckla, 2005) is appropriate for ages 5-18. The Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing 2nd edition (CTOPP-2) (Wagner, Torgesen, Rashotte, & Pearson, 2013), the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals - Fourth Edition (CELF-4), andtheWoodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Third Edition (WRMT-III)also measure RAN.

Many achievement tests measure reading fluency, including the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA) Third Edition, the Weschler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT III), and the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement.

Oral reading fluency can be assessed when students read aloud or silently, although the latter condition presents more challenges. The CORE Reading MAZE Comprehension Test (in CORE Assessing Reading: Multiple Measures, 2nd Edition) measures how well students understand the text they read silently.

Dual Language Learners (DLLs)

Most DLLs benefit from explicit fluency instruction since those activities used to improve reading fluency often use oral language for practice and oral rehearsal. Compared with native English speakers, those students who are learning English need more practice listening to the teacher and proficient readers model fluent reading. Each time they reread passages, they become more familiar with vocabulary words and syntax that is unique to English.

Provide additional work on English phonemes that are not present in the students' native language.

When assessing DLLs' reading fluency, keep in mind that norms developed for native English speakers may not be appropriate-especially for students who are just beginning to learn English. However, automaticity is essential to free up mental space for comprehension.

Automaticity at the letter, word, sentence and passage level is necessary for DLLs as well as for native speakers. More research is needed however, as to whether ELLs should meet the exact fluency benchmarks set for English speakers since most DLLs are still not fluent orally (Graves, Gersten, and Haagar, 2004). Some studies have found that DLLs can meet the same benchmarks.

Fluency alone does not predict reading comprehension for DLLs. Appropriate fluency along with developed oral language comprehension is necessary to predict reading comprehension in DLLs (Crosson & Lesaux, 2010).

Instruction and intervention to promote DLLs' reading fluency should focus on vocabulary and phonics instruction if needed, as well as fluency practice.

Be sure to emphasize comprehension in addition to providing DLLs with explicit instruction and extended practice to develop reading fluency.

DLL students will demonstrate fluency only when they are able to understand the text they are reading.

Don't neglect fluency work at the letter, word, sentence, and text level.

Most DLLs benefit from explicit fluency instruction since those activities used to improve reading fluency often use oral language for practice and oral rehearsal. Compared with native English speakers, those students who are learning English need more practice listening to the teacher and proficient readers model fluent reading. Each time they reread passages, they become more familiar with vocabulary words and syntax that is unique to English.

Be sure to emphasize comprehension in addition to providing DLLs with explicit instruction and extended practice to develop reading fluency.

Tips for Principals

Make sure that teachers understand the three aspects of reading fluency and how best to measure them. (See above). Use data team meetings to analyze oral reading fluency data (i.e., accuracy and rate), discuss prosody and how best to measure that important aspect of reading fluency.

Observing Fluency in the Classroom
Notice some of the following as evidence that the teacher is stimulating fluency behaviors:

Incorporates fluency-building activities (e.g., letter naming/identification, practice with punctuation marks, reading phrases with proper intonation) into instruction.

Utilizes techniques that build reading fluency throughout the day, including modeled fluent reading, choral reading, repeated readings, paired reading, independent reading.

Charts students' fluency progress for purposes of motivating students as well as to document progress and to adjust instruction.

Matches students with appropriate texts (e.g., predictable/repetitive, decodable, poetry) to promote effective independent reading practice.

Resources

Blevins, W. (2001). Building fluency: Lessons and strategies for reading success. New York: Scholastic Publishing.

Heibert, E. H. (2003). Quick reads. Glenview, IL: Pearson Scott Foreman.

Ihnot, G. (1991). Read naturally (Masters edition ME). Minneapolis, MN: Read Naturally, Inc.

Rasinski, T. V. (2003). The fluent reader. Oral reading strategies for building word recognition, fluency and comprehension. New York: Scholastic.

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The National Reading Panel (NRP) defined fluency as the ability to read orally with sufficient accuracy and speed, plus appropriate expression and identified fluency as one of the five essential components of reading instruction.

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K - 3

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Grades 2 +

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I've finished my DIBELS, and my kids are all over the ball park as far as their needs go. I have noticed that several students had high "Words Correct Per Minute", but their accuracy was low. These kids read loads of words, but were adding, changing, and omitting lots of words. These same kids also had trouble with punctuation, and retelling the story. They need work on accuracy!

2. Partner reading - One partner reads, the other partner checks to make sure they're reading accurately. This works best if the children are evenly matched at their own reading level. See the blog post I wrote about using this app for partner reading HERE.

What are your ideas for building accuracy?

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I've finished my DIBELS, and my kids are all over the ball park as far as their needs go. I have noticed that several students had high "Words Correct Per Minute", but their accuracy was low. These kids read loads of words, but were adding, changing, and omitting lots of words.

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Grade 5 +

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Educational reading games are still useful for uppe r elementary grades. However, students at this age don't want to play something that looks like it's designed for a first grader.

Here is a game that's simple to play and yet "mature" enough for middle grade students. Note that this game format can be used for a variety of reading skills.

Objective: Be the first player to reach the Bulls-Eye

Supplies: PDF game board, a game piece for each player, text from basal readers, textbooks, library books, articles, or other sources.
To play:

1. Print the target PDF game board. Print the target game board. Assign the text of your choice. Each player should have a copy of the same material so they can check each other's work. Also decide if you want students to practice reading sentences or entire paragraphs with fluency.

2. Each player puts his game piece on the outer ring.

3. Player 1 reads the first sentence/paragraph. If he reads it smoothly without any mistakes, he advances to the second ring.
If he makes a mistake, he stays on the outer ring.

4. The other players follow in turn.

5. The first player to make it to the bulls-eye wins the round and earns 1 point.

6. Play several rounds. The player with the most points is the winner.

**Use this same simple format to design other fun reading games of your own.

More Educational Reading Games

Rabbit Reading Race: Players read and complete sentences with high-frequency words as they race to the finish line. Lots of fun! Grades 1-2

Quick Draw - Kids must follow directions and draw simple objects correctly. Accurate reading comprehension is a must! Students can add additional directions, making this a game to reuse throughout the school year.

Joke Qs and As: Reading comprehension games featuring jokes. Kids love humor and will want to play these games over and over! Grades 2-5

Sight Word Bingo: A ready-to-print Bingo game with some of the most basic sight words for beginning readers. Grades K-1

Dolch Word Games for Kids: Dolch word games can help beginning readers have fun while they practice reading important words. This game is especially helpful for students who need to work on visual discrimination. Grades K-2

Let's Sort It Out!: Here's a great phonics game featuring short or long vowel sounds. Great for beginners. Also a fun bonus game on this page! Grades K-2
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Educational Reading Games for Reading Fluency, Comprehension & Fun!

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Educational reading games are still useful for uppe r elementary grades. However, students at this age don't want to play something that looks like it's designed for a first grader. Here is a game that's simple to play and yet "mature" enough for middle grade students.

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Scholastic Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers

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Explore Scholastic Teaching Tools for teaching resources, printables, book lists, and more. Enhance your classroom experience with expert advice!

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Grade 2 +

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What should fluency instruction look like? And, what can teachers do to help students whose fluency is far behind their peers'? This article can help practitioners effectively use fluency-based assessments and select instructional practices.

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Teacher professional development in reading connected with Reading First in Virginia. Information on teacher reading academies for kindergarten through third grade teachers. Reading academies provide training in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, based on research-based principles of reading instruction. Site includes forums for teacher communication and feedback and an electronic resource library.

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Grades 1 & 2

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Reading Fluency: Speed, Accuracy, Expression, Oh My! | Scholastic

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Read on for an explanation of speed, accuracy, and expression and their importance to reading fluency, as well as ideas for practicing these skills in the classroom.