Reading fluency – Why you should teach it as part of broader lesson, not as a standalone skill
While it can be taught discretely, it makes sense to combine the skills within a broader reading lesson, says Rachel Clarke…
Glossary
- Expression: a combination of intonation, phrasing and pace that shows the reader understands what they are reading.
- Intonation: the tone or pitch of reading which shows understanding of the words, phrases and context of the writing.
- Pace: the speed of reading. Readers sometimes need to vary the pace within a passage to convey for example falling and rising action.
- Phrasing: reading groups or phrases of words as units of meaning rather than reading word by word. Phrasing also involves paying attention to punctuation to maintain the sense of a text.
Reading fluency has become something of a hot topic in recent times.
This is almost certainly a consequence of the KS1 teacher assessment framework setting out 90 words per minute (WPM) as the expected rate of reading for children at the end of Y2 and more recently the Ofsted education inspection framework saying that learners should read with “fluency and comprehension”.
But what is meant by reading fluency, why is it important and how can we teach it in primary school?
What is reading fluency and why is it important?
First off, reading fluency is more than reading quickly. Certainly, reading with pace is an important aspect of fluency but it doesn’t tell the whole story. In addition to speed, Pikulski and Chard (2003) identified accuracy, expression and understanding as other key aspects of reading fluency.
Children who stop to segment and blend words find it difficult to remember what they have read and therefore find it harder to understand texts but when children decode accurately and quickly, and when they use the appropriate expression they are more likely to understand what they read and this is reading fluently.
Ninety WPM is used as a benchmark for this point.
Clearly there will be children reading at a slower rate who have good comprehension and children reading much faster who have less understanding of what they have read.
And we all know a child in a class past or present who read expressionlessly but with indisputable accuracy and understanding.
Generally though, all exceptions aside, 90 WPM is the point where children are no longer simply decoding text and recognising words but reading at a rate that enables them to gain understanding of what they read. Fluency, then, is a vehicle for reading comprehension.
Fluency is not just about reading aloud. Being about to decode accurately at pace and with expression are skills that readers apply during, and enable, their silent reading comprehension.
Encouraging children to read expressively in their heads cannot be underestimated as an approach to reading comprehension.
It is also worth noting that fluency is not a higher-order reading skill. Children should be taught how to read fluently alongside decoding so that they understand the books they read, engage with them fully and develop the skills they need to read independently as they develop as a reader.
Quick and easy ways to develop reading fluency
Reading fluency can be taught as a standalone skill, but as it is a vehicle for comprehension, it makes sense to combine fluency skills within broader reading lessons. All of the following activities can be used as standalone reading fluency tasks or used as part of your whole class or guided reading practice.
Marks out of ten
Most children are familiar with TV judging panels so will feel at home with the format of this activity. Read a passage to the children (you may choose to read it well or make some errors).
Encourage the children to listen attentively and act as the judges, giving you marks out of ten on their whiteboards for your reading. As they award their mark, they must provide feedback just like the judges on TV, commenting on what you did well and how you could improve.
It’s a good idea to create the success criteria with the class before you read the passage. Features to include could be your use of phrasing; how you attend to the punctuation; whether your pace is too fast or too slow; how you use intonation and expression to give meaning to the text.
You could even include elements of reading aloud to an audience such as volume, facial expressions, and eye contact with the audience.
Once your class is familiar with giving feedback on your reading, they should repeat the activity with a reading partner or in a small group in order to evaluate each other’s reading fluency.
Once the children are familiar with this approach, it makes a valuable independent activity for inclusion in the guided reading carousel.
Choral reading
Choral reading is a strategy where groups or the whole class read together. Poems and texts with rhythm or rhyme work particularly well for this approach. It often helps to read the passage to the children first so that they have a model but you don’t have to do this.
You can vary the approaches to suit your class and to maintain interest so that – for example, each group takes turns to read a verse of a poem, section or paragraph of a text. This approach works particularly well in whole class reading lessons as a way to ensure all children participate in a non-threatening way.
Copy reading
Read a short passage or poem to the class, demonstrating fluent reading, expression and attention to punctuation, and so on. Discuss your reading by talking about any tricky words or phrases and providing their meanings.
Also look carefully at the punctuation, pointing out how it affects your delivery. Ask the children to take turns rereading the text to a partner. If any of the children get stuck on a word, their partner should help them to read it.
Then, for additional practice with the tricky word, they should read the whole sentence or line again before continuing with the reading. This repeated reading approach to dealing with tricky words is an effective way of improving sight vocabulary, accuracy and pace.
Echo reading
You are the best model of fluent reading in the class. Read a sentence or a line of a poem and ask the class to read it back to you in exactly the same way. Echo reading is a shorter, but similar approach to copy reading – the difference being that it focuses on one line rather than a passage.
Just like copy reading, you can combine this approach with other strategies such as choral reading and marks out of ten. Echo reading is a useful strategy for teaching phrasing, pace and expression.
Recorded reading
Allow the children to make an audio or visual recording of their reading so they can play it back and hear what their reading sounds like.
This is a great opportunity for self-evaluation and could also be saved for assessment. You could encourage children to use the success criteria from marks out of ten to make their self-evaluation comments. Recorded Reading is another effective strategy to include in your guided reading carousel.
And of course… make time to read to your class for pleasure. When you read aloud to your class, you bring text alive through your phrasing, characterisation and pace. By listening to you read aloud, your class learn how to read text aloud themselves.
It also has the benefit of enabling the children to hear texts that may be beyond their own reading ability and that contain vocabulary and concepts that they may otherwise not experience. And don’t forget, you are the best model of reading fluency in your class.
Rachel Clarke is the director of Primary English Education. She trains teachers all over the UK and beyond and is the author of Reading Detectives and Writing Mechanics both available from Collins. Find her at primaryenglished.co.uk and follow her on Twitter at @PrimaryEnglish.
