Fluency
Fluency
What is fluency?
Fluency is the ability to read easily and smoothly with accuracy and expression, phrasing, and intonation. It is an important bridge between decoding and comprehension.
Does fluency matter?
YES! Slow, disfluent reading is linked with poor comprehension. This leads students to read less, which in turn results in their making slower progress in reading than more fluent readers their age. More fluent readers focus their attention on making connections among the ideas in a text and between these ideas and their background knowledge. This allows them to focus more on comprehension. Less fluent readers must focus their attention primarily on decoding individual words. This leaves them with little attention left for comprehending text. As a result, comprehension suffers.
How is fluent reading developed?
There is an almost certain prescription for developing fluency—lots of very easy reading and a great deal of repeated reading. The goal in fluency instruction is not fast reading, but fluent and meaning-filled reading. The strategies listed below are tried and true methods for developing more fluent readers:
- Activities to Promote Fluency
- Reader’s Theater
- Poetry Notebooks
- Fluency Development Lesson
- Matching Readers with Text
- Fluency Resources
