Fluency

What Does Fluency Mean?

When considering the meaning of fluency, it helps to think about the term second nature. Whereas first nature would apply to innate knowledge—that is, horse sense—second nature would apply to acquired knowledge that has been practiced to the extent that it, too, appears innate, or automatic.

Those who spend a great deal of time typing may be able to type accurately without really paying any attention to what they’re doing. It is then possible to devote all of one’s conscious brain power to the task of composing the ideas to be typed. Of course, if a typist has not taken the time to learn keyboarding, then no amount of hunting and pecking will result in typing that is both accurate and automatic. Therefore, the person who hunts and pecks will probably never achieve fluency in typing.

The most common usage of fluency—in reference to the ease with which one speaks a language—is also conceptually similar to reading fluency. If one does not consciously have to translate ideas from her native language to the language she is currently using, then she is able to think in her non-native tongue. For her, ideas exist in both of the languages she knows. The words appear in her head both accurately and automatically. She is, therefore, fluent in that language.

It is instructive to note that bilingual speakers who use only one language for an extended period of time may complain of being out of practice in the other language. For speaking other languages, typing, riding a bicycle, playing a harmonica, or any other acquired ability, a prolonged lapse in practice will adversely affect one’s ability to accurately and automatically perform the hitherto fluent skill. So it is with reading.

Reading fluency is the sum of reading rate and accuracy. Accuracy, in turn, is directly related to prosody. Prosody—the appropriate inflection or expression with which a student reads—is directly related to comprehension, which is synonymous with understanding. If we were to express all these relationships in a series of formulas, it might look like this:

R + A = F, where R=rate, A=accuracy, and F=fluency; and

F ∝ C—that is, F (fluency) is directly proportional to C (comprehension); and

C ∝ P—that is, C (comprehension) is directly proportional to P (prosody)

Simply put, if a student does not understand the words she is reading, she will not be able to read with expression. If a student is not able to read age-appropriate texts with expression, then she is not a very fluent reader.

Please note that there isn’t a magical plateau called fluency. Rather, fluency fluctuates. Our hypothetical reader above is having difficulty reading sentences that are leveled for the current month of her current year in school. Let’s say she is in the fourth month of the third grade. Though she isn’t reading on level with much fluency, perhaps she can read texts leveled at the eighth month of the second grade in a lively, conversational manner. Similarly, only a few college graduates can extract any meaning from the translated works of prominent cultural theorists. The rest of us are not very fluent with those types of texts and certainly cannot read them with expression.

Reading with expression? We’re Just Now Sounding Out Words. Should I Be Working on Expressive Reading Already?

The surest way to determine what your objectives should be is to assess each student individually. It is recommended that you begin formal, individual fluency assessments by the middle of the first grade. That’s typically when students are able to read connected text while stumbling over fewer than two words out of every twenty. The purpose of assessing students on an individual basis is to determine the type of instruction needed by each student. The spectrum of student abilities can be broad, even within a single classroom, and assessment data will help you make instructional decisions.

If your students are having difficulty associating letters and their sounds, then continued phonics instruction towards letter-sound mastery would be a more appropriate goal at this time. Automaticity with letter-sound associations, common spelling patterns, and sight words will help students to decode individual words. The ability to decode individual words will, in turn, help students achieve fluency.

The Language of Assessment

Leveling students with regard to fluency takes many shapes (by grade level, age, socioeconomic status), and research is always in progress. To give you an example of one rubric, the chart below shows the language used by the National Center for Education Statistics, a federal body that measures a variety of academic subjects. Here are their four levels of fluency:

You may also encounter other ways of grouping students according to their fluency. The table below is another typical way of classifying fluency levels:

How Can I Assess Students’ Fluency?

Obviously, the student must read aloud from an appropriate, grade-level text in order for the teacher to assess fluency. There are leveled texts with numbered lines and word counts that are provided specifically for assessing fluency. As the student reads for one minute, the teacher follows along on his or her copy of the passage and marks misspoken words, skipped words, self-corrected words, etc., with a slash (/) over such errors. An example of such a leveled text—one that is appropriate for you and me—lies below. Just for fun, read the passage for one minute. Be honest with yourself and write a slash over misread words.

In order to compute your fluency score, determine the total number of words you read correctly or otherwise. The cumulative word counts to the right of the passage can help you determine this. Then count the number of slashes and subtract this number from the total words you read. The difference represents your fluency score, which is expressed in “words correct per minute,” or WCPM.

What Do Fluency Assessment Results Tell You?

Armed with a student’s current fluency score in WCPM, and knowing your state’s target WCPM for your grade level (typically around 60 for first grade, around 90 for second grade, and around 110 for third grade), you can set short-term and intermediate-term goals for each student. Of course, just like losing weight or any other gradually attained goal, there are limits on what is reasonable. For improvement in fluency scores, experts have determined that tacking on between one and two WCPM per week is a reasonable expectation. Honestly, a weekly improvement of two WCPM is excellent; recognize that students may not be able to sustain that kind of improvement over a long period of time.

If Juanita is a first grader who scored 42 WCPM at the beginning of the year, with 32 weeks of instruction left in this school year, what kind of fluency score should we target for the end of the fall semester and for the end of the year?

Using the typical scores mentioned above, we’re shooting for a year-end fluency score of around 60 WCPM, or even as high as 80 WCPM for an advanced reader. Let’s see if we can do so reasonably.

Based on the calculations above, it is entirely within reason to expect Juanita to meet or surpass the upper expectation for fluency by the end of the school year. Now we need to set an intermediate goal for Juanita; that is, we want to know what Juanita needs to have attained by the end of the fall semester in order to be on track for the upper expectation.

What If the Needed Rates of Improvement Are Higher than Two WCPM per Week?

If needed rates of weekly improvement exceed two WCPM—even for the lower acceptable expectation—then you may be assessing with a text that is not at the student’s independent reading level. Even leveled texts that have your correct month and grade level on the cover may not be right for every student. Your assessment results will help you choose an appropriate text for each student; that is, a text for which the student misses no more than 5% of the words.

If you selected an appropriate text at the beginning of the year but the student is not achieving his or her weekly goals, then it may be necessary to re-evaluate your instructional strategies. Of course, talking with your students one-on-one will help you determine whether a student’s performance is being adversely affected by conditions outside of the classroom.

Promoting Fluency

In an ideal world, parents read with their kids each night. The child sits in mom or dad’s lap as mom or dad reads from a book. The book is arranged in such a way that both parent and child can see the text, and mom or dad points to each word while reading aloud. In this way, parents model fluent reading for their children, often reading the very same story many times.

Each of the following classroom instructional activities is an approximation of lap reading. Each promotes reading fluency through a sequence of modeling fluency, guiding student practice, and providing multiple opportunities for independent practice.

1. Shared reading from big books is an efficient method for modeling fluent reading to a group of students. With students within close proximity—closer to the teacher than when they are in the traditional semicircle for large-group activities—the teacher reads from a very large, illustrated, age-appropriate book with text large enough to be read by the farthest student. As the teacher reads, he or she points to the corresponding words so that all students can follow along silently. It is important to remember that the teacher is modeling fluency, not reading in a stilted, word-by-word monotone. The objective is for students eventually to be able to read the book for themselves, aloud, with some semblance of fluency. During subsequent readings, the students are invited to read along as the teacher or a student points to the text. It may be prudent to spread these subsequent readings over two or three contiguous days, depending on the length of the book. Some publishers provide class sets of smaller versions of their big book titles, which is an easy way to let students practice reading the same story with peer partners or by themselves, aloud. Peer partnering is discussed in greater detail below.
2. Recorded reading models offer the possibility of repeated practice during student-directed learning segments of the day, such as learning centers; plan-do-review; or while waiting for classmates to complete other work. Students will be able to listen to recorded models of a book being read while following along in a print version of the book. Then, students read aloud with the recorded model. Finally, students read the book aloud without relying on the recorded model at all. The relative independence of this approach requires some preparation. The teacher selects an age-appropriate book—that is, one that students will be able to read while stumbling over no more than one word out of every twenty—and reads it into a tape recorder. The teacher then sets up a listening center comprised of one or more tape players, one or more sets of headphones, and one or more copies of the book that was recorded. Finally, the teacher provides direct instruction to the students on how to use the listening center, modeling:
   • how to use the tape players
   • how to follow along with the print copies of the book
   • the volume to use while reading aloud with the recording
   • the volume to use while reading without tape accompaniment
3. Reading with a mentor is most like lap reading, which is a big advantage. However, it also requires that each student read a text several times over with guidance from a fluent adult reader, which is not always possible. To get started, a teacher or other fluent adult reader picks a book, poem, or passage that is appropriate for the student’s age and reads it to the student. After modeling, the adult provides guidance while the student reads the text repeatedly, until he or she is able to demonstrate rapid, natural-sounding reading. This occurs during one mentor visit, making effective use of mentors while allowing students to see and hear their own progress.
4. Reading with partners allows students to work with their peers to continue the momentum of a teacher-modeled reading lesson. After demonstrating a fluid, fluent reading of an age-appropriate text, split students into dyads (pairs) and give each student a copy of the text. For pairing purposes, it would be best to pair your less fluent readers with readers who are more fluent. Ask the more fluent reader to read aloud to his or her partner first. Then the less fluent reader reads with guidance from his or her partner until such guidance is no longer necessary. Pair students of average fluency with other students of average fluency. These students take turns reading to each other until they’re quite fluent with the text.
5. Dramatic reading, or readers’ theater, is a fun, kinesthetic, and interactive way for students to become fluent with a text. As with any script for performance, the narration should be kept to a minimum. Student actors practice reading their lines until they’re able to do so with great fluency. One effective incentive is to arrange a production of the play for parents to attend. During the performance, students act out their parts with scripts in hand. The narrator provides stage direction as needed, according to instructions that are part of the script. Actors follow along with the script and, when the time is right, read their lines with great gusto and fluency. Though acting out a play with scripts in hand may not sound very challenging, please keep in mind that the objective is reading fluency. If the students happen to memorize their lines, that’s OK. They’ll still be expected to read their lines with excellent fluency.
6. Independent reading of self-selected books provides students an opportunity to read about topics they find interesting. Such books also contain vocabulary with which students are already familiar, enhancing the odds that the student will be able to comprehend much of what she or he reads. Greater comprehension prevents frustration, which can damage a student’s self-identification as a reader and diminish his or her motivation to continue reading. Though teachers should concentrate on direct instruction and repeated reading aloud of texts during precious class time, it is a good idea to encourage independent reading for quiet times in the classroom, such as when other students are completing class work that the student has already completed. As mentioned above, independent reading at home extends a student’s gains made at school and enhances his or her reading fluency. An important point to remember: with regard to fluency, if you can’t hear it, you can’t assess it. Only by having students read aloud will you, mentors, or partners be able to provide immediate, constructive feedback. Without such feedback, students may be practicing something other than fluent reading. That said, independent reading can improve students’ reading fluency, though you won’t be able to assess it.

Review

We’ve covered a lot of information in the preceding chapter—from phonemes to fluency. Here’s a snapshot of the key points:

• The Alphabetic Principle establishes the systematic way in which the sounds we make with our vocal cord, nasal passages, and mouths are linked to certain letters and letter combinations.
• Phonological awareness is the recognition of the distinct segments of spoken sound: words, syllables, and phonemes. Under this category of phonological awareness, we have phonemic awareness, the recognition of phonemes, ability to segment words into constituent phonemes, ability to blend phonemes, and substitute phonemes to make new words.
• Research tells us that phonics instruction for young students works best when it is systematic and explicit. This means that the teacher charts a definite course, carefully selects which phonemes to introduce, and works with students on producing, recognizing, and blending them.
• Fluency means reading with accuracy, speed, and expression. Research shows that rereading aloud with the right amount of feedback and guidance promotes fluency in young readers.