Fluency is an essential part of effectively teaching reading. The NAEP reported that 45 percent of all fourth graders tested in the U.S. are not fluent readers. "Without that fluency, the world of imagination, humor, and drama contained in the finest books is no more a tangle of words." Lisa Blau.
The National Reading Panel (2000) defines fluency as "the ability to read a text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression." Fluency feeds into comprehension, so comprehension is being added to that definition. With fluency, one should be able to read the text quickly, correctly, with expression, and be able to comprehend what they are reading.
That makes fluency quite involved. The good news is that fluency can be taught.
"Massive reading does increase fluency, and thus there is something to be said for having students read a great deal in order to increase comprehension." Pressley 2002
"Effective teachers have their students spend enormous amounts of time reading easy texts that they can successfully read with fluency, accuracy, and comprehension." Richard Allington
Timothy Rasinski, a professor of literacy education at Kent State University believes that reading slowly interferes with comprehension. He sites that 90% of comprehension problems are due to fluency. "Fluent readers focus their attention on making connections among the ideas in a text. Between these ideas and their background knowledge, they are able to focus on comprehension."
A few other ways to teach and increase fluency are:
Repeated oral readings
Reading just right books
Reader's theater
Poetry
Song Lyrics
Nursery rhymes
Timing readings and checking for comprehension
Scholastic has an article of strategies to help second through fifth graders improve in fluency.
Even very young children who are just learning to read can practice fluency. When they have sounded and blended their way though even a simple phonics book, they can get faster at reading it, use correct expression and be able to answer questions that test their understanding of the text.
There really is a lot of information out there on the importance of fluency. Although sometimes not tended to as well as needed, it is really a very important aspect of reading.
1 comment:
I totally agree with you. Fluency is so important. I taught middle schoolers and a lot, a lot of them struggled with fluency. So we read outloud as much as possible in my history class. Never measured its effectiveness, but I hope it helped.
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