Reading Fluency: a key to unlocking reading potential

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Reading Fluency a key to unlocking reading
potential
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What is Fluency?

• National Reading Panel, 2000
• Fluency is the ability to read orally with
  speed, accuracy and proper expression.
• The Literacy Dictionary
• Fluency is the freedom from word
  identification problems that might hinder
  comprehension (Harris Hodges, 1995).
• Logan (1997)
• The properties of fluent word recognition are
  fast, effortless, autonomous, and unconscious.

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Components of Fluency

• Rate
• Accuracy
• Prosody
• Comprehension at rate
• (Hudson, Mercer Lane, 2000)

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What is reading rate?

• Reading rate is the fastest pace at which a
  person can understand complete thoughts in
  successive sentences of relatively easy material.
• Oral reading rate
• Silent reading rate

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What is accuracy?

• Accuracy is correctness in decoding. It is
  measured by recording oral reading miscues.
• We use accuracy is the following manner to help
  us determine what reading material we should give
  to students
• Independent Level 98 or higher decoding
  accuracy
• Instructional Level 90 97 decoding accuracy
• Frustration Level below 90 decoding accuracy

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What is prosody?

• Prosody is using your voice to convey meaning.
  It is the expression with which you read.
• Prosody includes
• Stress of words and syllables
• Pitch rising and falling intonation
• Juncture appropriate phrasing

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Beginning vs. Fluent Readers

• Reading utilizes three basic processes
• 1. Decoding
• 2. Comprehension
• 3. Attention - The cognitive energy used in
  mental processing tasks such as decoding and
  comprehending---a resource available in limited
  quantity.

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Beginning Readers

• Beginning readers find that the dual tasks of
  decoding and comprehending requires more
  attentional energy than is available.
• Use divide and conquer strategy complete one
  task (decoding) before beginning the next
  (comprehending).
• Alternating between decoding and comprehension
  places a heavy burden on memory, making reading a
  slow and difficult process.

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Fluent Readers

• Decoding is fast and easy automatic.
• (Students come to automatically recognize the
  approximately 300 words that comprise 85 of the
  words encountered in daily reading.)
• Attentional resources can be devoted to
  comprehension.
• Students can decode and comprehend simultaneously.

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Why is fluency important?

• There is a close relationship between fluency and
  comprehension (National Assessment of Education
  Progress, 1995).
• The National Research Council report Preventing
  Reading Difficulties in Young Children states
• Adequate progress in learning to read English
  beyond the initial level depends on sufficient
  practice in reading to achieve fluency with
  different text (223).

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Why is fluency important?

• Low fluency results in less reading practice
• - Matthew Effect - rich get richer, poor get
  poorer (Stanovich, 1986).
• Fluency has a direct impact on work completion
• - ex. 2 hours of reading homework takes a
  student three times as long if he is reading
  three times slower than his classmates (60 wpm
  vs. 180 wpm).

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Methods of Fluency Instruction

• Explicit Instruction
• Guided oral readings (repeated readings)
• All repeated reading interventions showed clear
  improvement between first and last readings (NRP,
  2000).
• Implicit Instruction
• Silent reading practice
• Silent reading should be paired with reading
  conferences or logs for maximum benefit (NRP,
  2000).

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What are some ways to improve rate?

• Speed drills (with passages, words or sounds)
• Practice high frequency words
• Rapid word recognition charts
• Choral reading
• Neurological impress
• Repeated readings in pairs
• Taped books
• Great Leaps or Fast Forward

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What are some ways to improve accuracy?

• Repeated reading in its various forms
• One to one corrective reading
• Taped text

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What are some ways to improve prosody?

• Readers Theatre
• Choral reading
• Radio reading
• Phrase-cued text reading

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What are some activities that improve all three?

• Teacher-modeled reading
• Choral reading
• Repeated reading
• Neurological impress
• Readers Theatre
• Phrase-cued text reading
• Previewing previewing
• Taped text