What is Fluency?Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression. Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. When fluent readers read silently, they recognize words automatically. They group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read.
Fluency develops as a result of many opportunities to practice reading with a high degree of success. Therefore, your students should practice rereading aloud texts that are reasonably easy for them – that is, texts containing mostly words that they know or can decode easily. In other words, the texts should be at the students' independent reading level. A text is at students' independent reading level if they can read it with about 95% accuracy. If the text is more difficult, students will focus on word recognition and will not have an opportunity to develop fluency. Mini-Lessons/Interventions on FluencyClick here for a sample of reading mini-lessons on fluency from Jennifer Serravallo's book, Reading Strategies. I highly recommend this book! (Must have an AISD login to access the excerpt; you may have to download for hyperlinks to work.)
Does every student need to be assessed for fluency, especially at the high school level? The short answer is no; your most struggling readers may be the most likely students struggling with fluency. The long answer is that of course, assessing every student will give you the best, most accurate picture. There are students that flip pages back and forth quickly so that as the observer, you might not know they are struggling with fluency. But when you ask questions, they often can't answer comprehension questions. Either the level of text is too high, they are struggling from another issue like focus, or perhaps their fluency is to blame. Since testing for fluency at the high school level often doesn't happen, it couldn't hurt to test all of your students once at the beginning of the year. If they are scoring well, don't re-assess. Only focus on the students who need it. (Here is a guideline of WPM for grades 1-8.)
Need Reading Passages for Fluency?In order to truly test for fluency, students need to be reading at their level, which means teachers need to know their student's lexiles. Using an online reading inventory program or paper test is essential at the beginning of the school year to track student's reading growth.
Teachers can then select passages from readworks or newsela in order to test for fluency. Newsela, in particular, has the same article in different lexile ranges, which is convenient. Once you find the article you want to use, meet with students individually during SIR (structured independent reading) for a reading conference and have them read aloud for one minute. I would recommend numbering the lines by how many words there are per line. This will make it faster for you to count them up when a student stops. Make the process transparent to students. Let them know where they are at and help them set a goal to improve it. The Ohio Literary Alliance has also provided instructions and different sets of reading passages, all designed to be read within one minute, if you need more ideas and structure for testing fluency. |
The Components of Fluency:
Accuracy - Accuracy helps students achieve accurate production of a target item (sound, word, or sentence structure) Strategies: chunking, blend sounds/sound it out, flip the sound, re-read, skip and come back, think about what word makes sense in its place Rate & Automaticity - Automaticity is reading without having to sound out a word, while rate determines that students read at a rate that doesn't detract from comprehension (not too slow, not too fast). Prosody & Intonation - Prosody is reading with intonation - proper expression, pitch and stress in words and phrasing, including understanding punctuation & pauses. Strategies:
Further, researchers recommend that students practice reading texts out loud, while teachers listen and provide feedback. |
How to Assess for Fluency:
More Fluency Activities
Readers' theatre
In readers' theatre, students rehearse and perform a play for peers or others. They read from scripts that have been derived from books that are rich in dialogue. Students play characters who speak lines or a narrator who shares necessary background information. Readers' theatre provides readers with a legitimate reason to reread text and to practice fluency. Readers' theatre also promotes cooperative interaction with peers and makes the reading task appealing. Audio-assisted reading In audio-assisted reading, students read along in their books as they hear a fluent reader read the book on an audiotape. For audio-assisted reading, you need a book at a student's independent reading level and a tape recording of the book read by a fluent reader at about 80-100 words per minute. The tape should not have sound effects or music. For the first reading, the student should follow along with the tape, pointing to each word in her or his book as the reader reads it. Next, the student should try to read aloud along with the tape. Reading along with the tape should continue until the student is able to read the book independently, without the support of the tape. Partner reading In partner reading, paired students take turns reading aloud to each other. For partner reading, more fluent readers can be paired with less fluent readers. The stronger reader reads a paragraph or page first, providing a model of fluent reading. Then the less fluent reader reads the same text aloud. The stronger student gives help with word recognition and provides feedback and encouragement to the less fluent partner. The less fluent partner rereads the passage until he or she can read it independently. Partner reading need not be done with a more and less fluent reader. In another form of partner reading, children who read at the same level are paired to reread a story that they have received instruction on during a teacher-guided part of the lesson. Two readers of equal ability can practice rereading after hearing the teacher read the passage. |
Radio reading
Encourage students to read a section of text to partners in different voices and find the voice that feels right for that excerpt of text. In this way, they are also finding the tone for the text. An example of this can be found below in the fluency tic-tac-toe activity. You can modify it anyway you like but it would make for a great reading center activity. Golden Lines
In choral, or unison, reading, students read along as a group with you (or another fluent adult reader). Of course, to do so, students must be able to see the same text that you are reading. Begin by having students read a short text to themselves (a page or less) and highlighting at least 5 sentences that they connected to. This works best if you choose a piece of text that is emotional and highly relevant to your students. Note: If you have a class of struggling readers, you may want to read aloud first, then have them read again to themselves to highlight the sentences they selected. After they have highlighted their "golden lines," instruct students to read aloud the sentences they highlighted with you as you read the entire text aloud to model fluency. As you read, you should hear a chorus of voices reading some of the same sentences with you. This can be a very moving activity; it also shows students that they share some of the same sentences with other students to build more connections and culture in the classroom. |