Fluency
What it is
- Fluency has three components
- Accuracy- the ability to correctly decode and recognize words
- Automaticity- the ability to read quickly
- Prosody- the ability to use prosodic features such as stress, pitch, and text phrasing at the appropriate times
Kuhn & Stahl, 2006
Why it’s important
- Fluency is one of the factors that can effect a student’s comprehension abilities
- The ability to read fluently (having proficiency in all three components) is an indication of better word recognition levels, a larger sight word bank
- Fluency indicates that less effort is spent on decoding and allows more cognitive attention for comprehension
- Using prosody helps students to comprehend better and gain a better sense of the meaning of the text
Duke, Pressley, & Hilden, 2004
Ways to Encourage Fluency
1. Build "graphophonic foundations"
- Strong phonological awareness and letter-sound relationship knowledge is needed for fluency
2. Build vocabulary and oral language skills
- Greater sight word familiarity and ability to connect the written form of words to known words in speaking vocabulary allows for greater word recognition
3. Teach high frequency vocabulary
- Words that occur constantly in language (the, of, and, is, if, to, have, was, etc.) should become second nature, both decoded and in their usage
4. Recognition of common word parts and spelling patterns
- Decoding becomes easier when more word parts are easily recognizable
- This also relates to morphology, being able to recognize different meaningful units of words
5. Teach decoding strategies
- Students should be shown distinct strategies for how to figure out unknown words
- Work to recognize sound-letter relationships
- Figure out if they have encountered the written form of a word they know in their oral language vocabulary
6. Using appropriate texts
- To build fluency, students should be given texts that include plenty of words they can easily recognize and decode and a few words that challenge them and help them practice the strategies they have learned
7. Use repeated readings to help struggling readers
- By reading the same text multiple times, struggling readers can practice their fluency by working to increase accuracy and speed each time they read
8. Encourage broad independent reading
- Simply, the more children read on their own the more practice they will gain in reading skills, which will increase fluency
- Reading many different kinds of texts will allow them to build broader vocabularies.
9. Monitor fluency abilities
- Teachers should make periodic assessments of students' fluency to know when interventions and extra help might be needed
Pikulski & Chard, 2005
Running Record Assessment
This assessment tests a student's fluency abilities in the area of accuracy. As the student reads a short text passage, the teacher notates errors in their reading such as ommission of words, substitution of words, and words prompted by the teacher. Repetitions and self-corrections in the reading are also noted. The assessment is scored as a percentage of the words read correctly out of the total number of words. Visit this website for official instructions on administering and scoring a running record. http://www.readinga-z.com/assess/runrec.html
Running Records and Benchmark Books, n.d.
DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills)
The DIBELS assessment, which can be used in varying forms for kindergarten through 6th grade, tests a student's fluency through several activities meant to assess their abilities in several areas of literacy. These include recognizing initial sounds (kindergarten), letter names (K-1st), phoneme segmentation (K-1st), decoding of nonsense words (K-2nd), accuracy of oral reading (K-3rd), retelling of a reading passage (1st-6th), and word use (vocabulary and oral language) (1st-6th). All of these assessments are contained in booklets specifically for the DIBELS assessment and each task is scored on a specific scoresheet in terms of accuracy and time taken to complete the task. DIBELS show students' accuracy and automaticity of several literacy tasks at different age levels, all leading up to the goal of being able to read accurately, quickly, and with good comprehension. Information and materials to download can be found at this site from the University of Oregon Center for Teaching and Learning: https://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures.php
DIBELS Measures, n.d.
Resources
DIBELS Measures. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2008, from: https://dibels.uoregon.edu/measures.php
Duke, N.K., Pressley, M., & Hilden, K. (2004). Difficulties with reading comprehension. In C.A. Stone, E.R. Silliman, B.J. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.), Handbook of Language and Literacy: Development and Disorders (pp. 501-520). New York: Guilford Press.
Kuhn, M.R. & Stahl, S.A. (2006). Fluency: A review of developmental practices. In R.B. Ruddell and N.J. Unrau (Eds.). Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 412-453). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Pikulski, J.J., & Chard, D.J. (2005). Fluency: Bridge between decoding and reading comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 58(6), 510-519
Running records and benchmark books. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2008, from http://www.readinga-z.com/assess/runrec.html
Shedd, M. (2008). Comprehension. Presentation for TE 301 (f), East Lansing, Michigan.
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