Reading Fluency

A second-grade teacher wants to help students improve their reading fluency skills. Which of the following scenarios would best help students build reading fluency?

• During whole-group instruction, the teacher calls on one student at a time to read a section of the text.

• Each student chooses a book from the class library to read independently and silently.

• The teacher assigns reading partners so that a high-level reader reads with a low-level reader from a text that is between their reading levels.

• In pairs, students orally read a text assigned by the teacher at their independent level.

If a student is reading a fictional text with 88 percent accuracy, the student is reading at his or her–

• independent level and should be encouraged to read books at this level independently.

• instructional level and should be encouraged to read books at this level when reading at home.

• frustrational level and the teacher should provide scaffolded supports to ensure comprehension of the text.

• frustrational level and the teacher should recommend that the student read this level of text when reading with a partner.

A third-grade teacher is working with a small group of students on building their reading fluency skills. She assesses their fluency at the middle of the school year. One student reads 84 words and makes 9 errors. What is the best way for the teacher to help this child improve fluency?

• Provide practice with word sorts that focus on the phonics skills that are evident in the student’s word reading errors.

• Time the student while reading an instructional level text and have the child practice repeated readings of the same text with a goal of improving timing in two to three days.

• Model how to read a text accurately at a fluent pace, starting with simple texts and gradually moving to more challenging texts.

• Teach the student to mark the text to assist with reading in phrases, beginning with two-word phrases and increasing the number of words in the phrases.

Which of the following is a recommended practice for developing prosody?

• Provide echo-reading practice in which the teacher reads a short segment of text accurately and with proper phrasing while the students follow along in the text, and the students reread the same text immediately afterward.

• Students practice speed drills in which the teacher provides lists of words and phrases that contain recently taught spelling patterns and the children practice reading the lists, with the goal of reading as many words as possible in one minute.

• As students read texts, the teacher provides prompts such as, “There is a tricky word on this line. Does it look right?” and “What do you hear first, next, and last in that word?”

• Students read decodable texts to repeatedly practice newly learned phonics skills and transfer skills from reading words to reading connected texts.

A first-grade student is reading 22 words correct per minute with 95 percent accuracy. Which of the following strategies will help this student improve fluency?

• Provide opportunities for the student to read and write connected texts that include words with recently learned phonics skills.

• Reteach word-reading skills that the student has not fully mastered.

• Introduce punctuation marks and how they affect a reader’s voice inflections.

• Lead a small group in choral reading a text, modeling proper phrasing and an appropriate pace.