How to Explicitly Teach Reading Fluency

Teaching reading fluency

Fluency is one of several main components of reading instruction. Along with vocabulary, phonological awareness and comprehension, fluency determines a student's potential to be successful in school across all subject areas. Fluency is the ability to read accurately, with expression, while maintaining an appropriate rate conducive to understanding the text. These are skills that can be taught with explicit classroom instruction.

Instructions

1. Teach fluency skills in repeated readings. Methods will vary depending on the grade level. In kindergarten and first grade, teachers can display poems or short stories on chart paper and read sections of these each day. The teacher reads a sentence, then the class repeats as a whole group. Beginning in second grade, teachers can make transparencies of stories, display them and have the class read the same page for several days until the majority of the class can read it fluently. The emphasis on these exercises is not comprehension but accuracy and smooth reading.

2. Demonstrate strategies that students can use to build fluency. Some kids are fortunate enough to have inherent awareness of fluency because they love to read and their parents read to them at an early age but most kids need to learn fluency. Teachers should demonstrate strategies like previewing the book and making connections with the text before reading to build background knowledge. These are actions that good readers take that increase fluency while reading.

3. Conduct small-group or one-on-one interventions if whole-group reading activities are not helping some kids to achieve grade- level fluency. Children who have poor phonological skills may continue to struggle sounding out words, so reading becomes slow and labored. These students will need additional help to overcome phonics deficits. Teachers can spend fifteen or twenty minutes working on decoding skills and listening to individual students read books that are on their instructional level. Working one-on-one not only gives a child the extra help they need; it also keeps them from being embarrassed when they struggle to read out loud in the presence of classmates.

Tips & Warnings

• Model fluent reading often in the classroom. Students will try to emulate what they hear.

References

• Reading Resource: Fluency Strategies For Teachers
• Education: Fluency Teaching Methods

Resources

• Maine Learns: Fluency Resources For Teachers