Why is reading fluency important

Their newfound independence may end up making them want to read more as they explore their own interests or dive into imaginative worlds!

Reading aloud to your child is the surest way to help them know that reading is about meaning. Having a familiar voice to help and guide your child through stories may also make them more comfortable while they work on their skills. Reading together supports the parent-child bond you have with one another by sharing ideas, stories, and moments together.

There is so much power in allowing your child to control at least to some extent their own reading journey. By encouraging your young reader to select their own books for their daily reading practice, you offer them a direct incentive for investing in their reading time. Letting your child choose their books also gives you the opportunity to get a better understanding of what books your child loves and could read more of in the future!

By rereading books, your child becomes more familiar with the words which helps them learn to read those words! Word trees help your child focus on one word at a time, then accumulate accuracy and speed until they have the entire sentence mastered. If you want to complete a word tree, think of a sentence your child can work on. Then have them write out a single word at the top of the paper — the first word of the sentence.

For the most part, reading fluency can be defined as the ability to read text easily, quickly and expressively without making much effort and with little difficulty comprehending the meaning of the text. When evaluating a child's overall reading fluency, there are two different types of fluency that are typically looked at: oral reading fluency and silent reading fluency.

Much as it sounds, oral reading fluency refers to how fluently a child can read aloud. This type of fluency is less about how well a child understands and remembers what they're reading, and much more about how they decode the text. If your child is a fluent oral reader, they should be able to read a given section of text without stumbling or hesitating, use proper intonation and expression known as prosody and pronounce most of the words correctly. Silent reading fluency is a bit more complicated than oral reading fluency.

While, again, a fluent silent reader should be able to read what is in front of them without hesitation, they should also be able to read it more than just word by word. The reader is expected to be able to read without mouthing or saying the words out loud, while visually taking in and comprehending more than one word at a time.

Many children who are thought to be fluent readers aren't as fluent as they seem when it comes to silent reading because, although they are reading the text at a good pace and mechanically without trouble, they aren't gaining comprehension of what they are reading. This is often demonstrated by the child who reads a book with ease but is unable to tell you what the story was about or answer questions about it.

The simplest reason reading fluency is important is because without fluency, reading is not enjoyable. Fluent readers will pick up a book and read on their own, even when it's not assigned for class. As students learn more words, they naturally become more fluent.

Another form of modeling is the neurological impress method. In the neurological impress method, a proficient and a struggling reader read together from a passage, with the more able reader reading near the rate of the struggling reader. Heckelman showed that after 29 minute sessions, 24 seventh- through ninth-grade boys, who were an average of 3 years behind in reading, gained an average of 1. Another technique that research has shown significantly builds reading fluency is repeated reading.

In fact, the National Reading Panel says this is the most powerful way to improve reading fluency. This involves simply reading the same material over and over again until accurate and expressive.

In the s, LaBerge and Samuels studied what happens when students read passages over and over again. They found that when students reread passages, they got faster at reading the passages, understood them better, and were able to read subsequent passages better as a result of the repeated reading.

Repeated reading is a form of mastery learning. The students read the same words so many times that they begin to know them and are able to identify them in other text. Besides helping students bring words to mastery, repeated reading changes the way students view themselves in relation to the act of reading. People who play video games are presented with a specific goal and with immediate, relevant feedback about their progress toward that goal.

This combination of having a goal and getting feedback on progress can be very motivating. Progress monitoring takes advantage of this combination to motivate students to read. You give students a specific, individual reading goal, and you tell them exactly how you're going to know they've met it. Then, you give them the means to measure how they're doing.

Finally, you make it simple enough that they'll know they've met their goal even before you do. This progress monitoring is what motivates students to practice reading the same story over and over until achieving mastery. The research-based Read Naturally Strategy combines these three strategies into highly effective programs that accelerate reading achievement.

Students become confident readers by developing fluency, phonics skills, comprehension, and vocabulary while reading leveled text. The time-tested intervention programs engage students with interesting nonfiction stories and yield powerful results.

Choosing the right Read Naturally Strategy program. Armstrong, S. The effects of material difficulty upon learning disabled children's oral reading and reading comprehension. Learning Disability Quarterly , 6, pp.

Breznitz, Z. Increasing first graders' reading accuracy and comprehension by accelerating their reading rates. Performances can take the place as simple readings in front of the class, in a small group, or with a partner.

Students can also make a PowerPoint presentation that they narrate by reading the poem. Presenting options are endless; the most important thing is to get them reading and rereading the poem in order to improve fluency.

They get so excited by the idea of performing in a play, even though this activity does not require students to memorize any text. Unlike a real play, there are no costumes, props, or sets needed. Chase Young has written several for younger students, and Aaron Shepard has some great scripts for older students. You can also write your own scripts, or even have your students write their own, based on picture books or a chapter from a novel.

This strategy pairs two readers together with the same piece of text. You can pair your students by listing your class in order from highest to lowest according to reading ability.

Then divide the list in half. Place the top student in the first list with the top student in the second list. Continue until all students have been paired up.