- Fluency Fluency is a critical but often neglected aspect of reading instruction. The components of fluency are rate, automaticity (recognizing words instantaneously), prosody or phrasing, understanding punctuation marks, and expression. Researchers differ on what the ideal reading rate is for elementary students, but most would agree with the following:
- By the end of first grade, students should accurately read and comprehend 81 words per minute
- By the end of second grade, they should read and comprehend 82–108 words per minute
- By the end of third grade, they should read 109 words per minute.
- By the end of fourth grade, they should read and comprehend 131–147 words per minute.
- By the end of fifth grade, they should read and comprehend 148–161 words per minute.
- By the end of sixth grade, they should read and comprehend 162–174 words per minute.
Automaticity has a number of sub-skills—r ecognizing sight words, associating the letter or letter combination with its sound, analyzing unknown words by recognizing chunks or syllables within words, and knowing multiple meanings of common words.
Fluency can be assessed through formal and informal tests. A number of diagnostic tests measure fluency by calculating rate and/or accuracy. Checklists, running records, miscue analysis, and retrospective miscue analysis can be used as informal means of assessing fluency.
Different research studies indicate that some activities that help increase a reader’s fluency are repeated oral readings, assisted reading, dyad reading, readers theatre, and choral reading.
- Ch. 10 PPT Attached Files:
- ch10PPT.pptx (1.39 MB)
- Assessment Assess the reading rate of the student whom you are tutoring. Using the Fluency Checklist given in Appendix C of the textbook, also assess the fluency of your student.
After you have assessed the specific sub-skill(s) that may be causing a problem, choose activities that will aid the disfluent reader. Be prepared to include in your lesson plan reflection a summary of the means of assessment and the type of activities that best helped the disfluent reader. - Readers Theater Make arrangements to work with other candidates to prepare a readers theatre selection. Each group should either videotape the reading so that the rest of the class or other classes can view it, or perform the readers theatre selection for the group.
- Phrasing Find a short passage or poem for the student with whom you are working. Rewrite the passage or poem into lines of appropriate phrases so they can use it to help disfluent readers increase their fluency.
- Rasinski Attached Files:
- IRA07Tim_Rasinski_2.pdf (6.299 MB)
- Dr. Rasinski on Fluency
- Flanders Field
- Antonym Rap
- ESL/EFL Teaching Tip: Word ladder activity