Reading Fluency and Its Effect on Reading Comprehension

Reading is an acquired skill, developed through explicit teaching and founded upon a child’s innate ability to hear and process sounds from birth. Beginning at birth exposure to oral language, gestures and the functions of communication (Fellows & Oakley, 2010 p.165) allows exploration of sounds and words and their connection to each other, and introduces cue systems that will later assist in decoding complex text as development of reading ability occurs. Cue systems including linguistic rules of speech, such as grammatical, pragmatic, semantic and syntactic structures (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2004, p. 324), provide readers with strategies and knowledge for comprehension and phonological awareness (Gascoigne, 2005, p. 1). Rich language exchanges

Visser (2013) described the effects of using Reader’s Theater as a strategy for improving the reading fluency, comprehension, and motivation of elementary English language learning (ELL) students. Results indicated Reader’s Theater is a motivational and effective strategy in teaching elementary ELL students to read in a second language. Recommendations for improving the effectiveness of using Reader’s Theater as a strategy include coping with performance anxiety, increasing the quantity of fluency practice, and incorporating Reader’s Theater into different content

Tyner’s Small-Group Differentiated Reading Model builds on each individual component and supports each of the other components. Each lesson of the model introduces new text for the students to read, interpret, comprehend, and synthesize. The re-reading of the text increases fluency, identification of sight words and their meanings, and comprehension

The intervention used first was the Peer-Mediated instruction with repeated reading (PRR). During this phase, the students were seated across from each other. The students were then given a copy of the passage, one in which to read, and the other in which to mark the time and note any errors observed, along with a stopwatch. Both students began reading from the selected text for the pair for a duration of twenty minutes at the beginning of the class. Next, the “paired reading” time consisted of each student taking turns reading using only a whisper. To ensure the fidelity of the intervention, measures were taken to ensure that one student didn’t have to be the first reader every time. During the read aloud, the student who wasn’t reading would follow protocol and read the following sentence “Stop. That word is _______. What word? Yes, ________. Please read that sentence again.” After the paired reading time, the reader would then be asked to read

Designing an individual intervention to increase reading fluency requires completion of assessments that will determine the child’s reading strengths and weaknesses. An inaccurate reader needs direct instruction on improving word recognition, which may include sight words and decodable words (which rules is the student not applying) at their instructional level. Once the goals have been established, in this case fluency, the intervention will begin with an introduction on fluency and word recognition.

A doctor once said ‘the more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go’. That doctor was, of course, Dr Suess in his book 1978 book, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!. Reading is the orchestration of many skills. It is much more than simply decoding words. The National Reading Panel Report (A Closer Look, 2004, p. 1) summarised a child’s reading process and teachers’ effective reading instruction into five essential components. These five critical elements are phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Each element is individually important; however, each cannot occur independently of one an other. The most effective way to teach these elements is through a balanced

For readers struggling with fluency, the techniques which are most helpful are ones that build vocabulary and allow the instructor to monitor student progress. Repeated reading is a technique which asks students to reread short passages 3-5 times until their fluency improves. In guided oral reading, the teacher previews difficult concepts and words with the student in order to improve their reading comprehension. Acting as a role model, the teacher reads the text aloud while the student listens to target words and concludes with a summary of the text in their own words. Peer-supported reading is a technique similar to guided oral reading in that a stronger reader acts as a model for a lower performing reader.

After about two weeks of playing theater games with the students to motivate them and get them out of their comfort zone it was time to begin our reader’s

Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately, quickly, and with expression. Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Struggling readers often have a hard time reading because they see unfamiliar words, they may lack comprehension skills or the motivation to read. The study I proposed inspects whether or not students reading fluency will improve due to an increase of sight word recognition activities, motivation and participating in the Accelerated Reader program. This study will include fifteen second grade students within a general education classroom. All twenty-five students within the classroom will receive the intervention, but data will be collected on two small groups with

A successful literacy program explicitly teaches phonological awareness and word knowledge for reading fluency and comprehension, within an environment catering for varying literacy levels.

Reading is a basic skill that students develop and improve throughout their whole life. There will always be room to improve a person’s reading skills; whether they be nine or ninety, one’s brain will always be building and making new connections and like Jonathan Seagull, one should strive to improve.

How did you learn to read? Most of us do not put much thought into this question, but learning to read is a difficult task. According to Cervetti and Hiebert, the National Reading Panel identified five essential components that a teacher should use during reading instruction, which gives the student the highest chance of being an effective reader (2015, p. 548). These five essential components are also called five pillars of reading instruction. They are Phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. This paper will describe each of the five pillars, how they are related, the benefits, as well as give some effective methods of teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. It will continue by addressing the relationship between reading assessment and instruction and end by identifying ways to address the needs and different learning styles of a student. This paper will start by looking at a definition of phonics and phonemic awareness, then move onto the role that each play in learning to read, how they are related, the benefits and effective methods of teaching both.

I am going to use repeated reading for my fluency strategy. Repeated reading is a teaching technique that is used to increase oral reading fluency. During repeated reading exercise students are given many opportunities to practice reading and rereading short text (50-300 words) in order to reach a specific fluency goal (about 95% accuracy). Repeated Reading uses repeated guided oral reading practice to improve reading rate, accuracy, and comprehension. Repeated Reading is executed in a one-on-one setting with a teacher and student, but can also be utilized in peer partnerships and integrated into daily oral reading activities in the classroom. Repeated reading has many benefits such as: boosts comprehension; cultivates fluency; develops decoding

Many students are passed on through the education system without having proper reading skills. These skills consist of fluency, comprehension, and phonemic awareness. Reading skills are foundational building blocks for elementary aged students. Students who lack proper reading skills, such as fluency or the rate in which they read, will ultimately lack comprehension of what they are reading due to the amount of time in which it takes the students to read. This leads to the question, how does fifth grade students lack of fluency affect his or her reading comprehension? Unfortunately, because reading skills taught in kindergarten and first grade focus mainly on phonemic

When data from students who had average accuracy and fluency scores, but lower comprehension scores were compared to data from those with similar accuracy and fluency but average comprehension, the consistent differences were found to be lower oral language and vocabulary skills in the poor comprehenders upon entry into formal schooling. (Nation, Cocksey, Taylor & Bishop) Thousands of dollars each year are spent on intervention, trying to improve the reading of children that show delays. When one reads, the clear goal is comprehension of what is read. Without communication of ideas between the author and reader, decoding texts is pointless. Most intervention programs are focused on phonics and word decoding. Oral language interventions concurrent with vocabulary and comprehension tasks at age eight have been shown to lead to significant improvements in reading comprehension. (Nation, et al., 2010). Reading comprehension is not merely a product of being able to decode words and sentences. How we teach children to process and integrate the ideas found in text can have a large impact on their ability to function in a world of ever expanding knowledge and information.