Developed by
Meredith Parrish & Erin McClure

• The more attention readers give to decoding and identifying words, the less attention they have left for comprehension.
• Students who experience reading difficulties are most often not fluent.
• There is a reciprocal nature between comprehension and fluency.

• Fluency develops over time and with extensive, guided reading practice.
• Fluent readers read more text. A non-fluent reader reads 100,000-400,000 words per year. A fluent reader reads closer to
4,000,000.
• Fluency improves when students practice on text they can read with 95 percent accuracy or better.

Which Approaches/Methods Increase Fluency?
• Repeated reading and guided oral repeated reading
• Repeated oral reading with feedback (one-on-one with student and adult)
• Repeated rereadings using a tape-recorded text
• Paired rereadings with feedback
• NOT ROUND ROBIN!
• Telling students unfamiliar words so they can focus on constructing meaning
• Helping students group words into meaningful phrases and chunks
Making the Most of Small Group Instruction
D. Diller (2007)

The Bridge Between Phonics and Comprehension
Decoding
• Rate
• Accuracy
• Prosody
Comprehension

Prosody is the rhythm, intonation, expression and phrasing that fluent readers recognize and use.
Try it out –
ABCD? EFG. HI? JKL. MN!
OPQ. RST? UV! W, X, Y, Z!

“It has been recently shown that the Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenic peptide amyloid β1–42
(Aβ1–42) binds to the 7nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (7nAChR) with high affinity and the
7nAChR and Aβ1–42 are both found colocalized in neuritic plaques of human brains with AD.”
Gustavo Dziewczapolski, Carolina M. Glogowski,
Eliezer Masliah, and Stephen F. Heinemann
The Journal of Neuroscience, July 8, 2009

• Summarize what you just read.
• Which strategies did you use as a reader?
• What aspects of fluency were difficult?
• How was comprehension affected?
Remember…fluency
- occurs without conscious awareness or intention.
- varies with difficulty of text, vocabulary, background knowledge & prior experience
- does not interfere with comprehension.
- develops over time with extensive practice.

When the inequality contains terms that have the variable as a factor and terms that do not have the variable as a factor on both sides, form an equivalent inequality that has all the terms with the variable as a factor on one side and the terms not having the variable on the other side. This can be accomplished by adding the additive inverses (negatives) of the terms to both sides of the inequality.
(Gobran, 1978)
Q: How do I help my students?
A: Build background knowledge and oral language skills!

 Fluent letter recognition
 Fluent word recognition
 Fluent word decoding
 Fluent reading of connected text
Fluent letter recognition predicts early reading achievement!
How do I support development at each stage?

• Fast Decoding
• High Frequency Words
• Punctuation
• Phrases
• Intonation and Expression
• Dialogue
• Adjusting Rate

What times during the day do your students practice fluency? What are students doing? What are you doing?

FDL (Fluency Development Lesson)
Rasinski & Padak, 1998 (see The Fluent Reader,
Rasinski, 1998)
• Teacher selects and reads a short passage (usually a high interest poem) and reads aloud, modeling Accuracy - Pitch - Expression
• Discussion of meaning and vocabulary
• Students read chorally from individual copies – repeat several times and creatively (in parts, stand up, high voice, whisper…)
• Pair students – each reads 3 times
• Return to whole group – volunteer reads aloud
• Students choose 2-3 words for class or personal word bank.
• Put one copy in poetry notebook. One copy goes home for read aloud to anyone/everyone at home.
• Next day – read again and start process over with a new passage.

• Guided, Repeated Oral Readings
• Choral Reading
• Taped Reading/Listening
• Timed Repeated Reading
• Paired Repeated Reading
• Shared Reading
• Readers Theatre
• Radio Reading (good for nonfiction/expository – think news report)
• Independent Reading
• Write! (help solidify the reading-writing connection by writing high frequency words, phonetic spelling using sound/spelling cards, vocabulary…)
• Opportunities to respond to the text

Sources??
• Use pre-made scripts or through shared writing, create your own from a familiar reread (folktale, fairytale, repetitive text…)
• Create a performance that includes key information from other content areas
What text, themes and/or science & social studies concepts would be fun to create scripts for? Be creative!!

Sources??
• Poetry works too (highlight lines in different colors for different groups of students)
• Let’s try it!
Saps’s rising
Grasshopper’s are
Hatching out
Autumn-laid eggs
Ground’s warming
Grasshopper’s are
Splitting
Young stepping
Into Spring excerpt from Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices
P. Fleischman (1998)

What would it look like?
Monday •Teacher reads script aloud
•Discuss for meaning and connections
•Discuss how you read (rate, expression…)
Tuesday -
Thursday
Friday
•Students rehearse 20–30 minutes with highlighted scripts
•Teacher provides feedback & coaching
•Students rotate reading roles
•Student take scripts home to practice
•Students practice for one specific role
•Showtime!
Over a 10 week Readers Theatre project, students will make significant gains in ORF. Maritinez, Roser, Strecker (1999)

1. As group, record an emotion on one 3x5 card.
Record a simple statement on another.
2. Cards will get mixed up and dealt back to a table.
3. When your group gets an emotion and a statement, practice for sharing with the class.
4. We will guess your emotion from hearing how you recite your statement.

• Choose words that students will use often when reading and writing and words that are often confused
– Example word for each initial consonant
– Example word for most common blends…
• bl, br, c., dr, dr, fl, fr, gr, pl, pr, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, str, tr
– …digraphs …and combinations ch, sh, th, wh Ph, wr, kn, and qu
– Examples for most common spelling patterns: a t m a ke r ai n d ay c ar s aw c au ght
– Example for highest utility phonograms
• ack, ail, ain, ake, ale, ame, an, ank, ap, ash, at, ate, aw, ay
– Example for most common contractions
– Examples for most common homophones (to, too, two)

• Chant, clap, stomp, snap out word spellings
• “I Spy” - Provide clues for students to guess
(ex: begins with s and rhymes with bed = said)
• Dictate sentences for students to write using only word wall words
• Circle/highlight word wall words in decodables
• Insert words into cloze passages
How else have you had your students use your word wall?

•Choose a short text (poem, story, nursery rhyme…)
•Together, decide where the natural chunks or breaks are.
•Write onto sentence strips and place in a pathway on the floor.
•Students walk through and practice fluent reading.
•After many repetitions, students should practice again with text as it originally appeared.

Let’s Try It!
• Review the article on Rhythm Walks.
• In groups of 5, select a familiar poem or nursery rhyme and create a
Rhythm Walk for it. Decide as a group where the breaks should be.
• Try out another groups Rhythm Walk when you’re done.

For Support…Students Should:
• preview text and make predictions
• have time to silently skim text prior to reading
• stop periodically to confirm/change predictions
• make connections & practice retelling after finishing the selection
You may want to provide bookmarks, question stems, story maps or organizers to encourage discussion of text after fluency practice.

When you get to an unfamiliar word…
• Look at the letters from left to right.
• As you look at the letters, think about the sounds for the letters.
• Blend the sounds together and look for word parts you know to read the word (spelling patterns).
• Ask yourself, “Is this a word I know? Does it make sense in what I’m reading?”
• If it doesn’t make sense, try other strategies
(pronouncing the word another way, reading on, looking for context / picture clues)

Timed Reading
• Provide fluency folders for each child.
• Practice with the same passage throughout the week. Partners can highlight errors in different colors for different days.
• Teach partners how to count errors and graph correct words per minute.

• Push them towards other genres
• Introduce new titles by the same author
• Have them read about an author’s life and think about how his/her experience influenced his/her writing
• Pull a text set (several genre selections) around a topic of interest
• From a reading group of students with similar interests or different interests – what can students learn from each other?
In the Company of Children, J. Hindley (1996)

1. Accuracy in Word Recognition
= % correct
2. Automaticity in Word Recognition
= words per minute
3. Interpretive and Meaningful Reading
= rubric
4. Are students comprehending what they read?
= retell, observation, conferencing
How do you measure fluency in your classroom now? How often?
How do you use that information?

Quantitative
Ex: DIBELS, fluency folders/graphs
• Provide accuracy & rate
Qualitative
Ex: Running Records, rubrics, observations,
Informal Reading
Inventories
• Provide accuracy, interpretation, meaningful reading
& comprehension

1. Select text that is familiar to student (textbook, poem, student writing…)
2. As student reads aloud, record correct reading and miscues (on blank paper or copy of student text).
3. Tabulate miscues.
4. Analyze miscues  Why does the student make errors? What cues does the student depend on (visual, context clues, grammar, structure of language…)?

What fluency practice would you use if you saw…
1. noise nose shoe shadow
2. this/that the
3. Sea ocean look like mama mother
What are other common error patterns? Fluency focus?

Expression and Volume
Phrasing
Smoothness
Pace
2 3 1
Reads in a quiet voice as if to get words out. The reading does not sound natural like talking to a friend.
Reads word-by-word in a monotone voice.
Frequently hesitates while reading, sounds out words, and repeats words or phrases. The reader makes multiple attempts to read the same passage.
Reads slowly and laboriously.
Reads in a quiet voice.
The reading sounds natural in part of the text, but the reader does not always sound like they are talking to a friend.
Reads in two or three word phrases, not adhering to punctuation, stress and intonation.
Reads with extended pauses or hesitations.
The reader has many
“rough spots.”
Reads with volume and expression. However, sometimes the reader slips into expressionless reading and does not sound like they are talking to a friend.
Reads with a mixture of run-ons, mid sentence pauses for breath, and some choppiness. There is reasonable stress and intonation.
Reads with occasional breaks in rhythm. The reader has difficulty with specific words and/or sentence structures.
Reads moderately slowly. Reads fast and slow throughout reading.
4
Reads with varied volume and expression. The reader sounds like they are talking to a friend with their voice matching the interpretation of the passage.
Reads with good phrasing; adhering to punctuation, stress and intonation.
Reads smoothly with some breaks, but selfcorrects with difficult words and/ or sentence structures.
Reads at a conversational pace throughout the reading.
Modified from T. Rasinski – Creating Fluent Readers

How can fluency practice fit into
Intensive Reading Model and
DIBELS assessment?
How will I use this information to guide my instruction or support other teachers?