Upskilling of Region and Division Reading Supervisors/Coordinators

on the Early Language Literacy and Numeracy (ELLN) with Focus on

the Science of Reading (SOR)

Fluency Instruction

A LAC Facilitator’s Session Guide

Prepared by:

Anna Marlaine V. Litonjua

Senior Education Program Specialist
Bureau of Learning Delivery
Teaching and Learning Division
Objectives

At the end of the session, participants should be able to gain:

• Revisit the principles and related studies in teaching reading through fluency
• Practice fluency through partner reading
• Explore ways and strategies on how to address the learning difficulties associated to
fluency

Key Understandings

1. Fluency is the ability to read "like you speak." It involves reading with reasonable
accuracy, at an appropriate rate for the task, with suitable expression. Fluency has
been clearly identified by substantive research as one of the critical building blocks
of reading because fluency is directly related to students' ability to comprehend.

2. Reading fluency represents an extremely complex process, as the reader has to

integrate perceptual skills to automatically translate letters into coherent sound
representations, lexical skills to unitize those sound components into recognizable
wholes, and processing skills to identify meaningful connections within and between
sentences, relate text information with prior knowledge, and make inferences to fill
in the gaps in the text (Fuchs et al., 2001). These skills need to be coordinated in a
seemingly effortless manner: reading fluency reflects this complex integration and
can be used as a reliable measure of reading expertise. Indeed, effortless, and
efficient reading fluency frees up cognitive resources for the higher-level and
demanding comprehension processing of the text.

3. Automaticity implies a quick and accurate level of word recognition that occurs with
little conscious attention.

4. Fluency (automaticity) is reading words with no noticeable cognitive or mental effort.

It is having mastered word recognition skills to the point of overlearning.
Fundamental skills are so "automatic" that they do not require conscious attention.

5. Dr. S. Jay Samuels, a professor and researcher well known for his work in fluency,
put forth a theory called the automaticity theory. According to Dr. Samuels, people
have a limited amount of mental energy. If you want to multitask or to become
proficient at a complex task such as reading, you first need to master the component
tasks so you can do them automatically. For example, a reader who must focus his
or her attention on decoding words may not have enough mental energy left over to
think about the meaning of the text. However, a fluent reader who can automatically
decode the words can instead give full attention to comprehending the text. To
become proficient readers, our students need to become automatic with text so they
can pay attention to the meaning.

6. Many non-fluent readers read haltingly, ignore punctuation, and combine phrases
into meaningless statements. They read with little or no prosody or expression.

7. Fluency includes reading with prosody, or expression; using appropriate phrasing;

and paying attention to punctuation. Students’ use of prosody provides clues to their
comprehension of a passage:For example, beginning readers may read the words
 with speed and accuracy, but their limited prosody indicates they do not understand
the meaning of the text.

8. Fluency can be assessed both formally and informally. To establish baseline data,
you can give students formal reading inventories or other assessments that measure
fluency.

9. Miscue analysis is a means to use a running record for diagnosis to identify students'
specific difficulties. Not only is the running record a way to identify reading rate and
reading accuracy, but it also is a way to assess reading behaviors and identify
reading behaviors that need support. A miscue analysis is a great way to get some
authentic information about a student's reading skills, and a means to identify
specific weaknesses.

10. Teacher modeling of fluent reading assists with the development of prosody
and comprehension and especially benefits students with low fluency. Repeated oral
reading involves having students read and reread texts three to five times with
assistance and guidance from teachers, peers, or parents. Research indicates that
repeated and monitored oral reading improves fluency as well as word recognition
and comprehension. Repeated reading can benefit most students throughout
elementary school, as well as struggling readers at higher grade levels.

Materials Time Allotment

• Phenomenal Woman by Maya 2.5 hours/ 150 minutes

Angelou
• If by Rudyard Kipling
• Tonight I Write the Saddest Line
• Phonetically Speaking – Story Time
with Darlene Davenport video
• Speed Reading video
• The Chaos of English
Pronunciation by Gerald Noist

References

Cotter Cotter, Jennifer, and St Fisher College. Understanding the Relationship between
Reading Fluency and Understanding the Relationship between Reading Fluency
and Reading Comprehension: Fluency Strategies as a Focus for Reading
Comprehension: Fluency Strategies as a Focus for Instruction Instruction. 2012.

“Elementary School Reading Apps and Websites.” Common Sense Education, 4 Nov.
2014, www.commonsense.org/education/top-picks/elementary-school-reading-apps-and-
websites.

“Fluency: Concepts and Research.” Reading.uoregon.edu,

reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/flu/flu_what.php#definitions. Accessed 23 Aug.
2023.
Hasbrouck, Jan. Developing Fluent Readers.
“What Is Fluency? Why Is Fluency Important? :: Read Naturally, Inc.”
Readnaturally.com, 2019, www.readnaturally.com/research/5-components-of-
reading/fluency.
PROCEDURE

Warm-Up
Storytelling
- Choose your favorite children’s story that contains a number of rhymes and
repetition to emphasize fluency
- For example, you can read or play the video of “Tikki Tikki Tembo” by Arlene Mosel
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhB8F61dtyA&t=56s)
-

Activity (15 minutes)

- Using blocks, playdough or drawing – challenge the participants to express their

understanding on the significance of reading in our lives.

- Ask group to present each work. Invite the audience to guess first the metaphor
crafted by the group before the reporter reveals the answer.

Analysis (10 minutes)

Advise participants to look at their outputs. Ask questions like the following:

1. Why does reading matter?

2. How is reading related to fluency?

Activity (5 minutes)

- Illustrate the effect of punctuation in meaning and fluency by playing the Youtube
video “Phonetically Speaking – Story Time with Darlene Davenport”. (video
uploaded in the drive)

Analysis (10 minutes)

Do Cold Call

- How do you determine if learners have difficulties in prosody?

- Why punctuation marks help us practice fluency?

Activity (5 minutes)

- Illustrate the effect of punctuation in meaning and fluency by playing the Youtube
video “Phonetically Speaking – Story Time with Darlene Davenport”. (video
uploaded in the drive)

Analysis (5 minutes)

Do Cold Call

- How do you determine if learners have difficulties in prosody?

- Why punctuation marks help us practice fluency?

Activity “Perspectives on Fluency Challenges” (15 minutes)

 - Group participants and ask them to brainstorm:
- Students – What it feels like to me if I have difficulties in fluency
- Parents – What I see at home when my child reads
- Teachers – What I see in the classroom when students have difficulties in fluency

This activity will explore different lens on the problems/signs when a learner is having
difficulties in fluency.

Abstraction ( 5 minutes)

Fluent readers can focus their attention on understanding the text and therefore are better
able to comprehend what they read. They are better able to interpret the text and make
connections among the ideas presented in the text. When students read fluently, they are
more likely to be motivated to read. When students find reading enjoyable, they read more.
Thus, they increase their word recognition skills. Students who labor with reading tend to
pause frequently. The result is slow and disconnected oral reading. Poor word-reading
fluency inhibits working memory and interferes with the reader’s ability to process
information at the content level. Non-fluent readers must decode words, access their
meanings separately, and then struggle to connect the words to what they already know.
Decoding and trying to figure out the meaning of text on a word-by-word basis can be
mentally exhausting. Students who are not fluent readers often lose interest in reading,
which results in their reduced exposure to new vocabulary, negatively impacting their
ability to comprehend text.

Encouraging students to read independently isn't the most effective way to improve reading
achievement. Too often, simply encouraging at-risk students to read doesn't result in
increased reading on their part. During sustained silent reading, at-risk readers may get a
book with mostly pictures and look at the pictures, or they choose a difficult book so they
will look like everyone else and then pretend to read. Even if at-risk students do read, they
read more slowly than the other students. In a 10-minute reading period, a proficient reader
who reads 200 words a minute silently could read 2,000 words. In the same 10 minutes,
an at-risk student who reads 50 words a minute would only read 500 words. This is equal
reading time but certainly not an equal number of words read. These students need to read
more, but just asking them to read on their own often doesn't work. The National Reading
Panel has concluded that a more effective course of action is for us to explicitly teach
developing readers how to read fluently, step by step or explicitly.

Activity (5 minutes)

- Encourage participants to read different poems to practice fluency

- Tonight I Write the Saddest Line by Pablo Nerudo

- Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
- If by Rudyard Kiping

Activity (10 minutes)

- Answer the Fluency Guide Activity Sheets

- Miscue
Analysis (10 minutes)

- How do you calculate students’ fluency scores?

Abstraction (5 minutes)

- Reading fluency is calculated by taking the total number of words read in one
minute and subtracting the number of errors, or words read incorrectly. This gives
the number of words correct per minute, or wpm. The words correct per minute
represents a student’s fluency score. In a one-minute reading, if a student reads 66
words and has 8 errors, the student’s fluency score is 58 words correct per minute.
Always encourage students to do their best reading, not their fastest reading. This
reminder helps students understand that the purpose is to read well even though
you are timing them. To obtain more accurate fluency scores, use the mean or
average of two or three fluency readings from different texts

Activity (5 minutes)

- Answer the Fluency Guide Activity Sheets

- Determining students’ reading levels helps match students to appropriate texts for
fluency instruction.

Analysis (5 minutes)
- How do you know when it is time to move students to a different level of difficulty?

Abstraction (10 minutes)

To build fluency, students need to practice fluent reading in more than one text at the
appropriate level of difficulty. Examine student fluency-progress data to determine when
students need a different level of difficulty. If students are making adequate and steady
progress one on level of text but are not approaching their fluency goals (words correct per
minute) on their first, unpracticed readings, have them continue reading at that level.

If students meet their fluency goals when they read texts for the first time, move them to
texts at the next higher level of difficulty (e.g., from Grade 1.3 to 1.4) or have them continue
in the current level and raise the fluency goal.
If students are having difficulty achieving their fluency goals, move them to texts at an
easier level of difficulty (e.g., from Grade 1.4 to 1.3) or continue in the current level and
lower the goal.

Independent- and instructional-level texts are most often used to build fluency. Texts at a
student’s instructional level are used when the teacher or others provides assistance and
support before, during, and after reading.

There is no consensus about what level of texts should be used for fluency building. But
some of the most successful fluency practices have involved texts at a somewhat
challenging level—not too hard but not too easy. During one-on-one teacher-led fluency
instruction, a student can be challenged with text that is difficult, or at the frustration level
(student misses more than 1 in 10 words). When the accuracy level is less than 90%, the
student needs extensive, ongoing support from the teacher. Determine a student’s reading
level by calculating the student’s percent accuracy for a specific text.
Activity (5 minutes)

- Perspectives “How to Help”

- What kids can do to improve their fluency
- What parents can do at home to help learners improve their fluency
- What teachers can do to improve learner’s fluency

Analysis (5 minutes)
- How do you know when it is time to move students to a different level of difficulty?

1. Repeated reading of text is one of the most effective ways to improve reading
fluency. Repeated reading is an evidenced based strategy that increases reading
fluency and comprehension among readers (Therrien, 2004). Repeated Readings
are effective because rather than encountering new text, readers are given the
opportunity to repeatedly read a given text until they can read it fluently with
mastery (Kuhn, 2005). Repeated practice of reading will improve accuracy and
automaticity in word recognition. In 2000, the National Reading Panel suggested
that repeated oral readings with feedback are effective in improving reading skills.
Repeated reading also increases reading comprehension because with each
reading, students are working on decoding, and eventually the decoding barrier
to comprehension is overcome. Reading text a second or third time improves
students’ ability to read difficult words with confidence and to read with
expression.

2. However, despite the improvements made, this research also indicated that there
were no significant differences between the repeated reading and the continuous
reading strategy (O’Connor, 2007). Continuous reading differs from repeated
reading in that continuous reading simply is reading a greater amount of text
across a given time. This conclusion is similar to the work of Allington (2001), in
that increased reading across the curriculum exhibits the most gains in overall
reading improvement. Continuous reading is a strategy that allows students to
read more text and to become exposed to much more text, therefore allowing them
ample time to read and interact with a given text. Allington (1977) argues that to
develop reading fluency, having the opportunity to read is necessary. Without the
opportunity to read, increasing reading fluency is not attainable.

3. Partner Reading - Partner reading allows small groups or an entire class to work
in pairs. Each pair reads and receives feedback from each other and/or the
teacher.

4. Neurological Impress Method (NIM) is a strategy used for students who are
struggling with fluency. According to Jennings, Caldwell, & Lerner, 2010,
“students learn by emulating a fluent reading model.” When first starting out with
this strategy, the teacher should read a little louder and faster than the student.
Once the student seems to be gaining their confidence and fluency is improving,
the teacher can start to read quieter and a little behind the student. If the student
seems to be having trouble, the teacher should help the student in a firm matter

5. For choral reading, the teacher and students read aloud together, following the
teacher's pace, so students get the benefit of a model while they practice reading
aloud. The teacher can stop at any time to ask questions, comment on the text,
discuss a vocabulary term, or remind the class that s/he expects everyone to be
reading. If choral reading is used with heterogeneously grouped students, it is
possible that the lowest performing students may have difficulty keeping up with
 even a moderate pace. However, they can follow along, participating when they
can, and still hear the text being read accurately and with good pacing and
phrasing. Choral reading works best if the teacher directs all students—
regardless of age or ability level—to use a marker or finger to follow along in the
text as they read

6. Cloze reading is similar to choral reading, except that the teacher does most of
the oral reading while the students read along silently. Once or twice every few
sentences, the teacher omits an important vocabulary or content word, not a
simple sight word, and the students' job is to read it aloud as a class. Notice that
with cloze reading, as opposed to choral reading, students spend less time
practicing oral reading. Therefore, cloze reading is best thought of as an
alternative to round robin reading.

7. RT and reading poetry can certainly provide students with an opportunity to read
text that is enjoyable and provides a clear incentive for students to read, and re-
read, their assigned parts or poem.

8. Partner reading, computer-based or tape-assisted reading, and readers theatre

provide opportunities for students to reread texts several times.

9. Modify setting. Partner reading strategies can vary. For example, you can
implement partner reading with the whole class by having all student pairs read
for one minute. Or, when you are working with a small reading group, other
students can practice partner reading by taking turns reading one page at a time.

10. Adapt instructional content. Partner reading can be adapted for students who
need additional support.

11. Choral reading is a fluency-building practice that can be used instead of

traditional round-robin reading. Choral reading actively involves students as they
read in unison, as a whole class, in a small group, or in pairs. Chunking is an
approach that encourages students to move beyond word-by-word reading.
Chunking involves reading phrases, clauses, and sentences by parsing, or
dividing text into chunks. For practice with chunking, divide text into three- to
four-word chunks or phrases by placing slash marks where students should
pause.

12. Chunking can help students improve both their prosody and their
comprehension. Feedback is an important aspect of fluency instruction. Before
implementing instruction that involves students working together, such as
partner reading, teach students how to provide appropriate feedback to their
partners. Model the use of appropriate feedback.