Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately (which requires good decoding skills, a large sight word vocabulary and a good understanding of morphology), at a good rate (similar to talking), and with appropriate expression (prosody).
When students read fluently, they have a greater mental capacity to focus on and make sense of what they are reading, leading to improved comprehension. It is also worth noting that being able to read with prosody is a good indicator that the student is comprehending the text. It is important to keep in mind that fluency and therefore comprehension is affected by the type of text being read and the purpose for reading the text.
There is no point focusing on rate or prosody if a student has poor decoding skills and is unable to quickly and easily recognise the majority of the words in the text being read.
However, if students can read a particular paragraph accurately, then they can practise reading and re-reading the paragraph to improve their rate and expression.
Below are some strategies for making the practising process more interesting:
- Record on Voice Memos or Voice Recording on your smartphone. An important component of this strategy is to play the recording back to the student and together analyse which sentences were read well and were easy to understand and which ones could be improved, before attempting additional re-recordings of the same passage.
- Use the Adobe Express Animation tool. Students can choose a character, customise the background and then record themselves reading the chosen paragraph. When replayed, the character ‘speaks’ the words and moves. Students can re-record themselves reading until the desired level of rate and prosody have been reached.
- For a longer project, you could use Microsoft Clipchamp. You can record for up to 30 minutes using the free version. The advantage is that you can create a PowerPoint side deck which the student can show as they are reading. This would be particularly suitable for creating a video for younger students. However, just keep in mind that if the point of the activity is to help the student read with fluency, then they should only be practising and then recording just a small amount at any one time.
- Book Creator is another tool worth exploring. Students can create, customize, and share their reading with others. A free account includes 40 books with unlimited pages. As noted above, if the point of using this tool is to develop fluency, then it is important students only work on a small amount of text at any one time.
References
Duke, N.K., Ward, A.E., & Pearson, P.D. (2021). The science of reading comprehension instruction. Read Teach, 74(6), 663–672. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1993
Lee, J., & Yoon, S. (2015). The effects of repeated reading on reading fluency for students with reading disabilities; A meta-analysis. Journal of Learning Disability. 50 (2), 213 – 224.
Hasbrouck, J. & Glaser, G. (2019). Reading fluency: Understand. Assess. Teach. Benchmark Education Company.
Vadasy, P., & Sanders, E. (2008). Benefits of repeated reading intervention for low-achieving fourth and fifth grade students, Remedial and Special Education, 29 (4) 235-250