Fluency

Many studies have shown that increased fluency has a direct effect on comprehension, so getting students to increase their fluency is definitely a goal of mine. Repeated reading is an easy way to increase speed, word recognition, and add expression, but as usual, the question is how to work that in to an already packed day. Many teachers (and students) like using Reader's Theater to get in that repeated practice, and I enjoy using those scripts, too, but I find it hard to work those in all the time.  My solution has been to send home the fluency practice.

Each week, on the back of their word work homework, I put a short passage for the students to read at home. I alternate between fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and I almost always connect it to something we have been doing in class. The passages are pretty short, and I encourage families to modify the length more if their child can't manage the length of the passage due to reading difficulties.  In some cases, I might send home an easier text altogether. The students are asked to read the passage five out of the seven days that they have it, and then return it to school.  I give them up to five points, which I record to use as a homework grade.

So does it work?  Well, at the beginning of the school year, I have each student do a one minute fluency reading in a fourth grade level passage. I do a running record as they read, and get an initial words per minute rate. I try very hard not to dwell on the numbers with the kids, but I do tell them I have a goal for them to be reading at least 125 words per minute by the end of the year. Those who are already at that rate get a higher goal. Then I will listen to them read in guided reading, and discuss phrasing and expression, but won't do another timed reading until the end of each trimester.  It is then that the kids can see their improvement, as I use the same text that I used at the start of the year. I know it isn't a cold reading, but they don't remember it well, either, and I like seeing how the running record changes, as well as the reading rate. I have had students literally double the number of words read per minute over the course of the year, and I attribute much of that to their daily fluency practice.  On the other hand, the kids who don't do the practice tend to see much smaller gains in their overall fluency.

I think that parents tend to like the practice, too, as they have commented to me that there is a marked difference from the first day their child reads, to the last. And by having the fluency passages be connected to our classwork, they can ask their child how the story ends, or something about social studies or science.  I have used  part of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech in January, and the Gettysburg Address in February.  I like using some of the more classic poems, like Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, too. There may be some memorization as the week goes on, but I like being able to refer back to some of these readings, and the kids will start reciting them to me.
Weekly fluency practice is an easy thing to get ready, and the payoff for me and my students has been huge.