In what order do I teach Fluency skills?

In what order do I teach Fluency skills? Miss Rae's Room's Blog

Fluency is the ability to read a text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression.

Oral reading fluency assessments measure reading rate and accuracy and are expressed in terms of the number of words read correctly per minute (wcpm).  

Teachers can assess a student's...
-word reading fluency
-nonsense word reading fluency
-connected text reading fluency

A student needs to be able to read 130 correct words per minute on a sixth grade level to be successful in content reading.  A reliable oral reading fluency norms chart is the Hasbrouck & Tindal Oral Reading Fluency Data 2017.  This chart compiles oral reading fluency norms for grades 1 through 6.

Fluency is determined by the size of your sight vocabulary.  

A sight word is ANY word a student can recognize by sight.  (I like to define "sight" here in terms of automaticity so less than 3 seconds to read.)  

Sight word vocabulary is the words that are recognized instantly and effortlessly from memory regardless of whether or not it is phonetically regular or irregular.  A sight word is known as a familiar word, rather than an unfamiliar word.  An unfamiliar sight word is one that students either try to sound out or guess.  When students are able to immediately recognize a word without using a decoding strategy, their fluency improves.  So an expanded sight vocabulary improves students’ oral reading rate, or fluency.

Fluency is the bridge between decoding words and understanding what has been read.

Fluency is the bridge between decoding words and understanding what has been read.

Fluency, then, is the bridge between decoding words and understanding what has been read.   Students who are fluent readers are better able to devote their attention to comprehending the text.  And as students become fluent readers, they are able to interact with text on a higher level.

So after I assess a student’s oral reading fluency skills, I use the following order of skills to pinpoint my students’ lagging skills that will be targeted during my intervention instruction?

In what order do I teach Fluency skills? Miss Rae's Room's Blog

In what order do I teach Fluency skills? Miss Rae's Room's Blog

Oral Reading Fluency has consistently been found to have a high correlation with reading comprehension.  Phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary all lead to COMPREHENSION - the ultimate goal of reading.

Learning to read is a multi-dimensional pursuit. Lots of things have to happen simultaneously. So your lessons should always include all 5 components of reading and spelling.
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Grab my 5 Step Reading Lesson Plan HERE!

Happy & Healthy Teaching!
PEACE,
Miss Rae

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