FLUENCY

SPEED 1000

Make a team of two readers. Beginning at line 1 read

the first word and your partner reads the second word.
Keep taking turns, reading as quickly as possible for
a minute.
When your team is finished, mark the last word your
partner reads.
 Armed Attack
(from Flies Taste With Their Feet: Weird Facts About Insects by Melvin and Gilda Berger)

Army ants travel in huge groups – from 10,000 to

several million. The advancing hordes give off a smell
like rotten meat! And their footsteps make a loud,
frightening, hissing noise.
No one is safe from marching army ants. They attack
even the biggest animals. Hundreds of ants swarm over
every victim. They open wide their razor-sharp jaws –
and ZAP! – slam them shut on the flesh. The ants hang
on as they pull and tear at the animal. Sooner or later
the creature dies of its wounds.
SPEED 1000
Play again trying to break this record but this time your
partner reads the first word, you read the second word and
so forth reading as quickly as possible for a minute.

When your team is finished, mark the last word your

partner reads.
 Armed Attack
(from Flies Taste With Their Feet: Weird Facts About Insects by Melvin and Gilda Berger)

Army ants travel in huge groups – from 10,000 to

several million. The advancing hordes give off a smell
like rotten meat! And their footsteps make a loud,
frightening, hissing noise.
No one is safe from marching army ants. They attack
even the biggest animals. Hundreds of ants swarm over
every victim. They open wide their razor-sharp jaws –
and ZAP! – slam them shut on the flesh. The ants hang
on as they pull and tear at the animal. Sooner or later
the creature dies of its wounds.
Component 5: Fluency

Hurry! Everybody hide or

we’ll ruin the surprise!

(is best read quickly)

Slowly, the snail slithered
down, down the window.

(is best read slowly)

ABCD? EFG! HI? JKL.
MN? OPQ. RST! UVWX.
YZ!
123. 4! 567? 89. 10!
Dogs bark? Dogs bark!
Dogs bark.
I am tired. I am tired. I
am tired.
In the summer I like to swim at the
beach. Although it’s very hot, I like
the idea of being in the cool water all
day. Summer is truly my favorite time
of the year.
In the summer / I like / to swim at the
beach. / / Although it’s very hot, / I like
the idea of being in the cool water / all
day. / / Summer truly is / my favorite
time / of the year. / /
Reading Fluency
The ability to read orally
with speed, accuracy and
proper expression
 Reading fluency is a synthesis of three factors
• Automaticity (Speed/Pace)
is quick, accurate recognition of words. It frees
cognitive resources to process meaning and it is
achieved through corrective practice
Automaticity (Reading Effortlessly) – Skilled readers are not
only able to identify words accurately but also recognize them
instantly.
More fluent readers
Less fluent readers
have more resources
need to allocate more
available for
resources to decoding
comprehension

decoding comprehension
Reading fluency is a synthesis of three factors
• Accuracy In terms of skills, this
dimension refers to
the ability of
PHONICS and other
readers to decode
strategies for decoding
words accurately
words
in text.
 Reading fluency is a synthesis of three factors
• Prosody
the ability of readers to appropriately use
phrasing and expression.
Reading fluency is a synthesis of three factors
• Prosody
There is an implicit understanding that fluency involves
reading with expression or prosody.

In other fluent reading incorporates prosodic

features such as pitch, stress and use of
appropriate phrasing.
 What are the preparatory and supportive fluency skills?

FLUENCY
the ability to recognize whole words
WORD instantly by sight without sounding them
RECOGNITION out.

One is the ability to decode words, i.e., to apply your

DECODING knowledge of letter-sound relationships and letter patterns
and correctly pronounce written words.

PHONICS Solid base of sound – spelling correspondence

 How Oral Reading Fluency correlates highly with R
eading Comprehension

MEASURE VALIDITY
COEFFICIENTS
Oral Recall/Retelling .70
Cloze (fill in the blank) .72
Question Answering .82
Oral Reading Fluency .91
Fuchs et al. 
FLUENT READER
DYSFLUENT READER
Well-phrased reading
Reads word by word
Expressive reading Little or with no expression
Identifies word accurately and
instantly
Accurate but poor
Reads as if talking comprehension
Reads fairly effortlessly, group Monotonous reading
words into meaningful idea, Skips words occasionally
and use expressions
appropriately Slow and labored reading
• Develops fluency in reading

From: The / man / has / a / hat.

To: The man / has a hat.

Felicitas E.Pado, Ph. D

 best
nest
•Recognizes patterns in pest
words rest
test
west
Felicitas E.Pado, Ph. D
• Checks for meaning and sense

From: The house / trots.

To: The horse trots.

Felicitas E.Pado, Ph. D

• Knows a stock of sight words

the is are for by from

which

Felicitas E.Pado, Ph. D

Reasons Why Learners Fail to Read Fluently
(Allington, 1983)

• Lack of exposure
• The good-reader syndrome
• Lack of practice time
• Frustration
• Missing the “why” of reading
How to develop FLUENCY?
Teachers need to:
1. Model fluent reading, and then have pupils reread the text on
their own. Usually, having pupils read a text four times is
sufficient to improve fluency.

2. Provide many opportunities for guided oral repeated reading

that include support and feedback of teachers, peers and parents.
3. Match reading text and instruction to individual
pupil.

4. Apply systematic classroom instructional

assessment to monitor pupil’s progress in both
rate and accuracy.
Activities for repeated oral reading practice can be:
Pupil – Adult Reading

Choral Reading

Tape-Assisted Reading
Partner Reading – reading aloud with a more fluent partner (or
with partner with equal ability) who provides a model of fluent
reading, helps with word recognition, and provides feedback.

Reader’s Theatre – the rehearsing and performing before an

audience of a dialogue-rich script derived from a book
What does research says about FLUENCY?

Learners who have reading difficulties have significant

problems in FLUENCY and continue to be slow
readers in adolescence and adulthood
What does research says about FLUENCY?

Fluency instruction is the missing element

in reading instruction of most teachers because
most of them learn to teach reading with a
focus on accuracy and comprehension
Ways of measuring reading fluency

1. oral/silent,
2. real/pseudowords, and
3. in-context/out-of-context.
Ways of Measuring Reading Fluency

Oral or silent: A test might require a child to read out

loud or silently. Reading aloud is slower than silent
reading but easier to measure. It’s also a more realistic
reflection of a child’s reading ability because you can
hear prosodic features such as tone and rhythm.
Ways of Measuring Reading Fluency
Real words or pseudowords: This distinction comes up
quite often in dyslexia testing. At first glance, it might seem
strange to ask children to read words that are not part of their
language. But this may be very useful because when you
encounter a “nonsense” word, you can’t rely on your word
knowledge or the context to identify it. Instead, you must rely
on your knowledge of sound/symbol relationships and
spelling rules. This is precisely the knowledge dyslexics
struggle to incorporate, so it makes sense to target it directly.
Ways of Measuring Reading Fluency

In context or out of context: Many fluency tests utilize lists

of words, free of any context. The reader must move
vertically down the list, rather than horizontally, as with a
continuous text. The logic behind this is simple: the test
wants to measure the speed and accuracy of word
recognition. Giving a context allows other skills to enter the
picture.
Tests that Measure Reading Fluency

Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT-5)

Assessors use this test to gauge how accurately and
fluently a child reads. It’s appropriate for people
between 6 and 24 years of age. The test comes in two
forms (A and B), which allows the practitioner to
calibrate it to the needs of a particular child. The format
of the test is simple; there are 16 stories with questions
after each one. 
Rate: This score comes from measuring the time a child takes to read the
story. Reading is done out loud to make this possible.

Accuracy: The number of correctly pronounced words goes into a

calculation of accuracy.

Fluency: From these two, the assessor can derive a fluency index, which
collates the rate and accuracy. For many dyslexic children, rate and
accuracy are in tension: fast reading is inaccurate, and accurate reading is
slow. This test can provide a clear picture of the imbalance and give
subsequent therapists a basis for developing a treatment plan
Tests that Measure Reading Fluency
Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE-2)
TOWRE is useful in assessing decoding ability. But it is also
informative for the clinician who wants to ascertain reading
fluency. This test utilizes word lists to measure fluency. One list
uses actual words (Sight Words), and the other uses
pseudowords (Phonemic Decoding). For both tests, the words
are out of context and oral. Children have 45 seconds to read as
many of the words as possible. Then, the clinician notes the
number of correct pronunciations and generates a score
accordingly.
Tests that Measure Reading Fluency

Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (TOSWRF-2)

Silent Word Reading Fluency (TOSWRF) utilizes silent reading. This is a
quick test, lasting either three or six minutes. Each form takes three minutes,
and the assessor may use two. The test is also suitable for group or
individual administration because it does not require reading aloud. The
child reads rows of words with no spacing between the words. The rows
grow progressively more difficult. The task is to draw lines to mark where
one word ends and another begins. The number of accurate lines the child
draws in three minutes yields the score. The words in this test are out of
context, but all real.
Tests that Measure Reading Fluency

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V) Oral Reading

Fluency Subtest
This subtest of the WISC-V battery of tests aims to assess all three aspects
of fluency: accuracy, speed, and prosody. To complete the test, the child
reads two different texts. Once they reach the end of each text, the examiner
asks a comprehension question, but this is not evaluated. The purpose is
simply for the child to read with comprehension. The score for accuracy
comes from the accuracy rate on both texts. The score for speed is based on
the amount of time the child takes to complete the task. The examiner then
adds an evaluation of prosody after having observed the child read.
When does Fluency Instruction useful?

…useful when pupils are not automatically

recognizing the words in their texts.
When shall we know that a child is not
automatic?

If you ask the pupil to read orally from a text that

he or she has not practiced; and the pupil makes
more than ten percent word recognition errors.
• If the pupil cannot read orally with
expression

• If the pupil’s comprehension is poor for the

text that he or she reads orally.
Steps in Providing Fluency Instruction
• Measure student’s fluency
• Set fluency goals for individual students
• Select appropriate text for fluency
• Model fluent reading

• Provide repeated reading

opportunities with corrected
feedback

• Monitor student’s progress

You should formally and informally assess
fluency regularly to ensure that your pupils are
making appropriate progress.

• The most informal assessment is simply listening to pupils read

aloud and making judgment about their progress in fluency.
• Teacher should include more formal measures of
fluency.

• Probably the easiest way for formally assess fluency is to

take timed samples of pupil’s reading and to compare their
performance with published oral reading fluency norms or
standards.
• Monitoring your pupil’s progress in reading
fluency will
• help you determine the effectiveness of your
instruction and set instructional goals
• motivate students (also, seeing their fluency growth
reflected graphs you keep)
• The simpler measures of speed and accuracy, such
as calculating words correctly per minute, are
more appropriate for monitoring fluency.

• Other procedures that have been used for

measuring fluency include IRI, Running Record,
and Miscue Analysis.
What do research tells us?

The National Association of Educational

Progress reports on reading ability levels
44 % of structures have no fluency (2003).
Research indicates that pupils who have
reading difficulties have significant
problems in fluency and continue to be
slow readers in adolescence and
adulthood.
Fluency instruction maybe the missing element in
reading instruction for most teachers

because

most of us learn to teach reading with a focus on

accuracy and comprehension
(since few of us were taught to read quickly and automatically)
Though some pupils learn read fluently (with little
direct instruction from teachers)

many will require practice and support from

peers and teachers

… to improve their fluency and make reading

a more valid activity.
EXAMPLES OF FLUENCY LESSONS:

Phrasing Using Preposition

Make students aware that their

knowledge of grammar will help
them appropriately chunk text as
they read.
Provide students with passages in which the prepositional phrases
are underlined or highlighted.

She quickly went up to the front room. Of course, by

then, Jack was already running out the front door.
When he saw Lucky come after him, he laughed and
dashed off into the woods. He thought it was all a big
game.
A House of Bird Oral Reading Modeling
by Ann Dickson
Bird said, “ I want to a new house.” “Read dialogue
“This is too little!” as if it is
“Let’s go look,” said Snail. spoken”

Bird and Snail went along.

“Raise your voice at
They went up and went down.
the
They went here and went there. end of a question
Was there a new house for bird? sentence.
Read an exclamation
Is this a house? No, not this. sentence with
excitement.”
Is that a house? No, not that.
Snail said, “ I see something!”
“Could it be a house for Bird?”
• List down 2 tools that would assess fluency.
• To assess speed and accuracy
• To assess prosody

•  Provide a description of each tool. How shall it

be administered?
Model …
Model…
Model …

Model FLUENCY !
“Soit is with children who learn to
read fluently and well: they begin to
take flight into whole new worlds as
effortlessly as young birds take to the
sky.”
- William James
 FLUENCY” is a wonderful
bridge to comprehension and
to a lifelong love of reading.
Maryanne Wolf