1. Developing Fluency: Theory, Research and Practice
Sharon Walpole
University of Delaware
In earlier sessions, we have considered important building blocks of reading achievement: phonemic awareness and phonics. This month we will begin to turn our attention to coordinated processes. We are going to consider fluency, which has been called the “neglected goal” in reading instruction. We’ll do that by looking back at some of the theories we have explored, discussing research specific to fluency, and then considering characteristics of effective instruction in classrooms, small group, and intervention settings.

2. Anticipation Guide Yes No
Oral reading accuracy is a good predictor of reading comprehension in grades1-2.
Fluency intervention should begin as soon as we measure oral reading fluency.
Fluency intervention should employ grade level and challenging texts.
We should measure silent reading rate because skilled reading is silent.
Accurate and automatic oral reading is necessary but insufficient for comprehension.
Before we start, I want you to think about what you already know (or don’t know) about fluency.
Here is an anticipation guide. I have composed some yes-no statements whose answers are important and also fairly complex. And when I think about my own learning, I know that there was a time when I would have answered each of these incorrectly.
Take a moment to circle yes or no to each of these; we’ll return to them at the end of the session and see whether you’ve changed your mind.

3. Game Plan
What is fluency? Why is it important? How does it fit within models of reading and reading development?
How can we measure it?
How can we address it during whole-class and needs-based instruction?
I’m going to start with definitions for fluency, and they will be nested within some of the models of reading that we’ve discussed.
Next we’ll turn attention to strategies for assessing fluency and for interpreting fluency data.
We’ll look at fluency instruction, both in whole-class and in small groups,
And finally we’ll look at one model for intensive fluency intervention.

4. Questions and Answers: Fluency
What is it? & Why is it important?
Definitions, theoretical models and developmental models we have already explored and those described in recent fluency studies
Let’s get started with the definitions and models.

5. Fluency is “reading with expression.”
Fluency is “making written language sound like oral language.”
Fluency is evidence of comprehension?
Fluency is a prerequisite to comprehension?
What can you actually do with those ideas?
If you asked teachers what fluency is, you’d be likely to get one or all of these answers.
As far as instruction goes, these definitions, while technically accurate, are really insufficient to drive instructional decisions.
For that, we have to go deeper.

6. Wolf and Katzir-Cohen’s Developmental Definition (p. 219)
In its beginnings, reading fluency is the product of the initial development of accuracy and the subsequent development of automaticity in underlying sublexical processes, lexical processes, and their integration in single word reading and connected text.
I found a really comprehensive definition of fluency in an article by Wolf and Katzir-Cohen on its intervention.
Take a look

7. These include
Perceptual [letter recognition?]
Phonological [segmentation and blending?]
Orthographic [graphemes and spelling patterns?]
Morphological [grammatical morphemes? Prefixes and suffixes?]
processes at the letter, letter-pattern, and word levels, as well as semantic and syntactic processes at the word level and connected-text level.
The parenthetical inserts are mine.

8. After it is fully developed, reading fluency refers to a level of accuracy and rate where decoding is relatively effortless; where oral reading is smooth and accurate with correct prosody; and where attention can be allocated to comprehension.
Wolf, M., & Katzir-Cohen, T. (2001). Reading fluency and its intervention. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5,
I like this definition because it encompasses both the lower-level and the higher-order processes that are involved with fluency, and it allows us to consider fluency across the span of reading acquisition and into the area of mature reading.

9. Fluency requires the child to use phonics and spelling knowledge automatically
(DIBELS LNF, ISF, PSF, NWF)

10. Fluency requires the child to automatically integrate phonics and spelling knowledge to recognize entire words
(DIBELS ORF)

11. Fluency requires the child to link recognized words into natural phrases, with appropriate enunciation and emphasis (DIBELS ORF)

12. Fluency in Connected Text
(textual)
Fluency at the Word Level
(lexical)
Fluency within Words
(sublexical)

13. What are the implications of the developmental definition for curriculum and instruction?
How might this definition be helpful in the K-3 setting?
Give 4 minutes for table discussion
(What happens if K/1 teachers define fluency only as “reading with expression?”)

14. How is the developmental definition of fluency connected to theoretical models of skilled reading and of reading acquisition?
Rayner, K., Foorman, B. F., Perfetti, C. A., & Pesetsky, D., Seidenberg, M.S., (2001). How psychological science informs the teaching of reading. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2,
This notion of fluency operating at both the lower-levels of letter and word recognition and at higher levels, even interacting with text comprehension, is actually very consistent with models of reading and reading acquisition that we’ve been considering.
If you can’t get enough of the theoretical stuff, consider this article. It’s available on the web and gives a great review of almost all of the concepts we’ve been studying together.
Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, and Seidenberg
How Psychological Science Informs the teaching of reading

15. The short answer . . .
all models of skilled reading AND stage models of reading acquisition either target or require fluency.
Here’s the short of it . . .
All models of reading include automaticity and fluency at some level.
Let’s take a closer look

16. Automaticity Theory
Two requirements of reading – automatic word recognition AND constructing meaning
The more energy spent with decoding, the less remaining for meaning construction
Laberge & Samuels (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6,
LaBerge and Samuel’s automaticity theory is almost always cited as a theoretical basis for fluency instruction.
Generally, speaking, as in the Simple View of Reading we considered earlier, automaticity theory holds that there are two components to reading: word recognition and meaning construction. Automaticity theory argues that if neither of those components were automatic (that is, accomplished without expending attention) then the system would be overloaded. LaBerge and Samuels believed that cognition was a limited-resource system, and that energy spent on decoding stole energy from comprehension. They also believed that comprehension processes could not be automated.
So automaticity theory holds that increasing automatic word recognition allows for cognitive energy to be spent on meaning. . . an intuitively attractive idea. The problem with this is that many comprehension processes can be automated and that decoding and comprehension are not totally independent processes.

17. Ages and Stages: Chall’s Model
4. Comprehension of multiple perspectives
3. Comprehension of a single perspective
2. Fluency
1. Phonological recoding
0. Alphabet knowledge
Stage 0
Birth to K
Stage 1
Grades 1 and 2
Stage 2
Grades 2 and 3
Stage 3
Grades 4 to 8
Stage 4
Highschool
Over the last two months we’ve worked to contrast models of skilled reading with models of reading acquisition. Jeanne Chall’s stages cover the range from acquisition to skilled reading. She argued that from birth through the end of kindergarten, readers generally gain alphabet knowledge (and some measure of phonemic awareness) and then in first and second grades they enter a stage of phonological recoding, where their attention is fixed on making the match between letters and sounds and oral language. Then, continuing into third grade they are consolidating and automating that recoding in the fluency stage. For upper elementary and middle school, then, they focus on comprehension, but not really critical literacy, and finally in high school they come to comprehension of a variety of perspectives.
Again, like automaticity theory, this is intuitively attractive. We learn the alphabet, we learn to decode and spell, we gain fluency, and then we focus on attention. However, it seems too rigid. For example, we know that comprehension skills and strategies can and should be taught across the developmental span. .
Chall, J.S. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: MacGraw-Hill.

18. Stages in Word Recognition Beginning Spelling Phonetic Pre-alphabetic
Uses environmental and visual cues
Precommunicative
Pictures or letters, but random
Partial alphabetic
Reads words by forming connections between only some of the letters
Semiphonetic
Abbreviated spellings, some sounds represented
Full alphabetic
Reads words by forming complete connections because child can segment to the phoneme
Phonetic
All sounds represented
Consolidated alphabetic
Reads words by chunking (morphemes, syllables, etc.)
Transitional
Long vowels marked, but not always correctly
Conventional Spelling
Mostly correct spellings
Ehri, L. (1997). Sight word learning in normal readers and dyslexics. In B. Blachman (Ed.), Foundations of reading acquisition and dyslexia: Implications for early intervention (pp ). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gentry, J.R. (1982). An analysis of spelling development in GYNS AT WRK. The Reading Teacher, 36,
When we apply stage theories to word recognition and to spelling, we do see remarkable consistency. Children tend to move from prealphabetic reading and spelling to partial alphabetic to full alphabetic as they master the alphabetic principle and learn their letter sounds; then they spend some time consolidating that knowledge and really learning spelling patterns. It is that last stage consolidated alphabetic word recognition and transitional spelling, that is most clearly linked to the development of reading fluency.
Again, those theories are intuitively attractive, especially if you’ve had a lot of experience with young readers and writers. The problem, however, is that no child ever reads or spells every word with the same strategies – some words simply become automated quickly, while others may pose more difficulty. In some ways, it depends on the words rather than on the child’s general stage.

19. Development of Automaticity in Word Recognition
Does it happen at the level of the individual word?
Does it happen at the level of the orthographic feature?
Either way, it happens through repeated, successful exposures to words
Share’s Self Teaching Hypothesis: Decoding Process Development of Orthographic Representation
David Share’s Self Teaching Hypothesis takes care of some of that ambiguity. He argues that through successful decoding attempts readers gradually develop a word-specific orthographic representation. After many successful decoding attempts, that representation is so strong that decoding is unnecessary and the word becomes a sight word.
Again, that is an intuitively attractive idea – we’ve all seen children move from decoding to automaticity with a novel word.
But now we’re almost back to the beginning To automaticity theory
Stage theories and the self teaching hypothesis all posit that reading achievement increases with automatic word recognition, and that practice with reading words and reading texts increases automaticity. Automaticity theory argues that this automatic word recognition allows for cognitive attention to be placed squarely in the realm of comprehension, where there is real work to be done. So in all of these theoretical models, fluency development depends on automatic word recognition and it is important to real reading goals.

20. So what is fluency again?
Fluency has three components, two of which we have seen in those models.
Accuracy in word recognition (which comes either through automatic word recognition, through decoding, or through guessing from context, a very risky and cognitively taxing business).
Automaticity in word recognition (which amounts to reading rate)
And prosody, or sound, which includes stress, pitch, and phrasing – what teachers call “reading with expression.”

21. What do you think we need to do to increase their understanding?
How well do the teachers, coaches, and administrators with whom you work understand fluency?
Which concepts are new?
What do you think we need to do to increase their understanding?
If that’s what fluency is, how are we doing in understanding it?
Give 4 minutes for discussion at tables
Questions?

22. How should we measure fluency?
Fuchs, L. S. Fuchs, D., Hosp, M.K., & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Scientific Studies of Reading, 5,
Good, R. H., Simmons, D.C. & Kame’enui, E.J. (2001). The importance of decision-making utility of a continuum of fluency-based indicators of foundational reading skills for third-grade high-stakes outcomes. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5,
If fluency is important, we should have strategies for measuring it.
Traditionally, we have tended to measure oral reading accuracy and oral or silent reading comprehension.
Informal reading inventories
Standardized tests
Running records
Now we are focusing much more attention on automaticity measures and on measures of reading rate.
This makes good sense; while oral reading accuracy is related to reading comprehension for first and second graders, beginning in third grade it isn’t. Imagine a school-level data set that included accuracy percentages on a grade level passage. Many more children would appear to be on target (accuracy > 90%) than would really be on target; some would read so slowly that they would be unable to comprehend. A child reading at 90% and 50 wpm is really different than a child reading at 90% and 90 wpm. Oral reading rate is related to comprehension across the developmental span.

23. Reading Rates (WPM) Grade 1 60-90 Grade 6 195-220 Grade 2 85-120
Grade 3
Grade 8
Grade 4
Grade 9
Grade 5
Grade 12
Here are some range for reading rate across ages and stages of reading development. Ranges are important here; readers vary their reading rate depending on passage difficulty, prior knowledge of passage content and purposes for reading. In fact, we should be teaching children to do that.
So let’s do a little experiment:
(Use the Umberto Eco passage to measure the oral reading rate in the room?)
Harris, A. J., & Sipay, E. R. (1990). How to increase reading ability (9th Ed.). New York: Longman.

24. Fluency Norms: WCPM Grade Fall Winter Spring 1 60 2 53 78 94 3 79 93
114 4 99
112
118 5
105
128 6
115
132
145 7
147
158
167 8
156
171
And here are some norms that might be more useful in schools. Notice that the ranges are replaced with some targets by time. Also notice that the largest gains occur in second and third grade. However, also remember that the texts are getting more and more difficult. So even though the differences in rate may seem minimal, the text is getting more difficult.
Rasinski, T. R. (2003). The fluent reader. New York: Scholastic Professional Books.

25. NAEP Oral Reading Fluency Scale4
Large and meaningful phrase groupings. Preserves author’s syntax and includes expressive interpretation. 3
Three- and four-word phrases. Mostly appropriate and preserving syntax. Little or no expressive interpretation. 2
Two-word phrases. Occasional larger groupings, but awkward and unrelated to larger context. 1
Word by word. Occasional two-word or three-word phrases.
One successful attempt to go beyond rate and measure prosody is the fluency scale constructed for the oral reading portion of the NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. You’ll see that fluency is defined as phrasing. However, in the NAEP study, reading rates for readers at levels 1 and 2 were much lower than rates for students reading at levels 3 and 4.
This scale is useful for considering oral reading fluency in schools. It is probably best to record the children’s oral reading and apply the scale that way until teachers are comfortable with it and can agree upon the scorings. In fact, that would be a great activity for coaches to use with teachers as they are contrast oral reading accuracy with a fuller definition of fluency.

26. In GARF, how is fluency measured?
Kindergarten
DIBELS
Letter-name fluency
Initial sound fluency
Phoneme segmentation fluency
Nonsense word fluency
First
Oral reading fluency
Second and
Third Grade
In GARF, we use various 1-minute probes to measure the development of automaticity and fluency.
In fact, if we look at the protocol for testing in GARF, we’ll see that in kindergarten, we are really only measuring automaticity with bottom-up processes: speed of letter naming, phonemic segmentation of initial sounds and full phonemic segmentation, and automaticity with phonics concepts applied to nonsense words.
In first grade, we measure these lower-level phonemic awareness and phonics skills until January, and then we add oral reading fluency in context with a words correct in one minute probe.
That same measure of oral reading fluency is used in second and third grade – words correct in one minute.
For people whose training is similar to mine, it may be tempting to think that DIBELS authors invented this measure, but that simply isn’t true. This is really a version an assessment procedure that has been used for 20 years – curriculum-based measurement, first popularized and validated by Stan Deno – where teachers took periodic measures of WC1minute from the textbooks in use in their classroom.

27. How do teachers react to this notion of automaticity with basic processes and oral reading fluency taken as indicators of overall reading competence?
Why don’t we just continually measure comprehension, since it is reading?
Why don’t we measure silent reading rate?
Why don’t we measure prosody?
In my experience, at first blush teachers are hesitant to accept measures of WC1minute as proxy measures of overall reading for some valid reasons: they don’t include comprehension, they are oral rather than silent and they don’t include prosody. I think it wise to deal with these concerns directly.
Fuchs and colleagues compared measurement of oral reading rate to various measures of comprehension (question-answering, passage recall, cloze) for their correlation to a standardized measure of comprehension. Oral reading rate had the highest correlation (.91) with middle and jr. high school struggling readers.
They also summarized and investigated whether reading words in isolation was a more powerful predictor of comprehension measured on a standardized test; again oral reading rate was a better predictor with 4th graders. In fact, when they turned that analysis around, they found that both list reading AND comprehension made independent contributions to oral reading rate. So oral reading fluency is more than automaticity of word recognition; it is also depended upon comprehension. So perhaps measures of oral reading fluency measure low-level processes of word recognition AND tap some higher-level comprehension processes. That makes sense. How could you read with prosody if you didn’t understand at least the grammatical relationships?
Fuchs and colleagues investigated the silent v oral question, also with 4th graders. They found much higher correlations between oral reading rate and both question answering and comprehension as measured on a standardized test than between silent reading rate (e.g., circle the last word read at 2 minutes) and comprehension. Perhaps there is error in the self reporting, but at any rate, oral reading rate seems a better measure than silent.
For the issue of prosody, we simply have a difficult time measuring reading with expression across observers and time with reliability. However, tools such as the NAEP scale might be useful for teachers with this concern.

28. How might these automaticity and fluency assessments work together as a system for monitoring student achievement?
Good, Simmons and Kame’enui argue that DIBELS measures represent a system for planning prevention-based instruction. Phonological awareness measures (ISF and PSF) collected during Kindergarten can guide curriculum decisions at that time; Measure of the alphabetic principle during first grade can be used in the same way, as can measures of accuracy and fluency from the end of first grade through the end of third grade. These measures allow predictions of performance on standardized tests at the end of third grade, a high-stakes reality for all schools.
Within this framework, it is important to know a bit about how these measures and their benchmarks were established. First of all, the ORF fluency goal of 40 wcpm was used to establish the alphabetic principle and phonological awareness benchmarks – and this is really meant to be a benchmark for ALL children. Note the difference between this benchmark and the range provided by Harris and Sipay or the 60 wc1m from Rasinski. When I think in my head about end of first grade reading rate, I always target 60wpm on a first grade text; so we really should be unsatisfied with performance below the 40wc1m on DIBELS. All of the previous benchmarks for alphabetic principle and phonological awareness were supported in that about 90% of students who met an earlier benchmark then met the next one. The only measure that was problematic was PSF at the end of kindergarten, and the authors concluded that it really depended on the instructional context.
For the accuracy and fluency benchmarks in second and third grade, DIBELS authors consulted published studies of reading rate and then did their own studies to compare the utility of their benchmark scores for predicting success on the statewide test; they found that 96% of the students who scored above the third grade ORF benchmark met expectations on the third grade criterion referenced test in Oregon.
Phonological
Awareness
Alphabetic
Principle
High Stakes
Test
Accuracy and
Fluency

29. One thing is certain . . . readers develop reading fluency through reading practice.
Let’s try some.
All of the available research on the development of reading fluency includes some form of reading practice. That makes sense, given all of the models of skilled reading and of reading development that we have considered.
Let’s see if we can experience a practice effect, even as skilled readers. I’ve selected some reader’s theatre scripts that we can use. Reader’s theatre is a form of reading practice where readers practice orally reading from a specially-prepared script and then perform for their peers. The key to a good implementation of reader’s theatre is that each of the players practice different parts during several sessions, then they practice their final role, and then they perform in public. This is a great way to motivate children to engage in repeated oral reading practice.
Use scripts.
To what extent did you benefit from even one repetition?

30. How can we support fluency development?
Stahl, S. A. (2004). What do we know about fluency? Findings of the National Reading Panel. In P. McCardle & V. Chabra (Eds.), The voice of evidence in reading research (pp ). Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
Kuhn, M. R., & Stahl, S. A. (2003). Fluency: A review of developmental and remedial practices. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 3-21.
There are two important current reviews of research on fluency development, and together they can inform instructional decisions for classrooms. We’ll look at them together.

31. Some Generalizations
ORF programs and strategies work within a specific developmental window – late first grade through early third grade
Increasing the volume of children’s reading is what all approaches have in common
Different forms of assistance and modeling may make more difficult (even grade-level) texts accessible
Fluency work develops fluency and comprehension, but not word recognition in isolation
One of the most important questions in a classroom or school is who needs what. For oral reading fluency work, one thing is sure: children who haven’t yet developed enough word power to read text aren’t going to benefit from a fluency intervention. They are likely to need a phonemic awareness and phonics intervention.
Whatever approaches or programs we choose to build fluency, they have to increase the number of words the children read – either through wider reading or through repeated reading. If both forms of work are continuously monitored by a teacher, we don’t really know which is better.
This next idea has been hard for me to accept, but I finally have. I always thought that fluency gains could only come with independent-level text, text that a child could read at first blush with % accuracy. When I was a literacy coach, I moderated that stance to instructional level (90-97%) accuracy and really worked on teachers raising children’s rate. And now that I’ve done more reading, I realize that we can control the type and amount of assistance and support that children get, and that in some cases, grade level text is the best text for fluency work.
We have to be clear about the potential effects of fluency work:
Fluency work increases reading rate; it increases comprehension; it does not increase phonics knowledge or phonemic awareness.

32. Guided Oral Reading But why can’t we just do what we’ve always done
Round Robin Oral Reading
One robust finding in research reviews is that guided oral reading improves fluency. But guided oral reading is defined in many different ways.
Many teachers tend to view oral reading fluency development as synonymous with Round Robin Oral reading.
Why do you think that teachers gravitate toward RR?
Steve Stahl took a strong stance against this practice; although it may be somewhat effective in fluency development, it is likely to be much less effective than alternative practices. Observational studies indicate that (much to teachers’ disbelief) other children are not anxiously following along – in fact, it is impossible to follow along directly. Mostly children are reading ahead, trying to find their next spot, or simply daydreaming. At any rate, children only definitely read what they read out loud and overall engagement is low.
Teachers also tend to argue that RR allows them to provide necessary feedback and scaffolding for children during reading. While this is theoretically possible, observational studies again suggest that it is rare. What teachers do during RR is tell children words.
In lieu of those two findings, round robin is simply inefficient. Instructional time is wasted.
So let’s turn to what teachers can do instead.
Each child reads too little;
Engagement is low
Instructional time is wasted
Teacher-provided
feedback is of low quality

33. Four Simple Alternatives
Choral
Reading
The teacher leads the entire class or group reading aloud in unison.
Echo
The teacher reads a sentence and then the class rereads it aloud.
Partner
Pairs of readers alternate reading aloud by a set protocol.
Whisper Reading
Each child reads aloud (but not in unison) in a quiet voice.
If we are to end the practice of round robin, we must replace it with practices that are manageable. Here are four practices that are basic to most fluency-building systems. None are perfect, but all increase the amount of reading compared to RR.
In choral reading, the teacher is leading the children in reading in unison. The important thing here is that the teacher’s reading rate is reasonable given the children’s age and stage. The teacher’s voice is providing some support, but she is not reading at a normal adult fluent rate.
In echo reading, the teacher reads solo a or sentence or page of text, and then the class repeats in unison. Echo reading provides slightly less support than choral reading.
In partner reading, two children are reading to one another with some system for alternating: sometimes one child reads a page and the other rereads it; sometimes they take turns at the paragraph or page break.
In whisper reading, each child reads the text to him or herself, but not in unison. This is the least supportive practice, but it also provides the most text reading and the maximum challenge.
How common are these practices? If they are new, how are teachers responding?

34. What can teachers do with the whole class?
Distributed Practice
Fluency Development Lesson
Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS)
Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI)
(For reviews of supplemental fluency curricula, consult and
There are several sets of research-based fluency-building strategies that are independent of specific instructional programs. Each of them consists of a series of procedures that students and teachers use to read texts rather than a set of texts. If I were using a core program, I would call each of these “supplemental strategies” rather than “supplemental programs.”
There are also commercially-produced curricula that contain both texts and lesson-plan formats that are specifically designed to build fluency. For descriptions and reviews of these programs, please consult the FCRR webpage and the Oregon Reading First webpage.

35. How can teachers facilitate this?
Distributed Practice
Children developing phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle need short, frequent, targeted practice sessions.
How can teachers facilitate this?
One thing that I have noticed as I have looked at core program materials and DIBELS scores in various schools is that fidelity to the core RARELY seems to translate into low-risk DIBELS scores for kindergarteners and beginning first graders. And it doesn’t seem to be because the skills are not taught and learned; it seems to be because they are not overlearned to automaticity.
We really need to help teachers facilitate practice with those skills previously taught. Have you seen any good strategies for doing this? Or are there built-in reviews in some of the programs you are using?

36. Fluency Development Lesson
15 minutes 4xs per week
Teacher selects short text ( words) and prepares two copies for each child
Teacher reads the text aloud several times
Class reads the text chorally several times with the teacher
Students work in pairs to reread the text 3 times each
Teacher sends text home for work with parents
Several pairs perform for the class
Rasinski, Padak, Linek, & Sturtevant (1994). The effects of fluency development on urban second grade readers. Journal of Educational Research, 87,
The fluency development lesson is a form of supplemental instruction that was developed for second graders. It is a brief lesson (15 minutes/day).
The teacher selects a relatively short text for fluency development, 100 to 200 words, and types a copy of it.
The teacher reads the text aloud several times to model fluent reading.
The class reads the text chorally with the teacher.
Children work in pairs to read the text three times each.
One copy of the text is sent home for work with parents.
Several pairs perform for the class.
This is a very simple procedure for oral reading. When you think about your core programs, are there texts there that might lend themselves to a fluency development lesson? Would these 15 minutes be appropriate within your instructional block?
Time to discuss this procedure

37. PALS 3 xs 35 minutes each week, high-low pairs
Text is appropriate for weaker reader
5 minutes: strong reader reads aloud
5 minutes: weaker reader rereads
2 minutes: weaker reader retells
5 minutes: strong reader reads paragraph by paragraph, stopping at each to tell the main idea
5 minutes: weak reader uses same summarization procedure
5 minutes: strong reader predicts content of next half page, reads it aloud, and revisits prediction
This procedure has been used with students in grades 2-6
Fuchs, Fuchs, Mathes, & Simmons (1996). Peer-assisted learning strategies in reading: A manual. (Box 328 Peabody, Vanderbilt Univ. Nashville, TN 37203)
Peer Assisted Learning Strategies is a form of paired reading that has been tested many, many times with positive results. You can read about PALS and watch a demo video at we’ll put up a link on the architects’ page.
As I see it, it is a combination of repeated reading and reciprocal teaching. The key to PALS is teaching children the procedures, but you can get a manual with directions for how to do that. The teacher takes her class, ranked by achievement (which would be easy to do with DIBELS oral reading rate) and breaks it in half. The strongest reader in the class is paired with the strongest reader in the weaker half. With 20 children, ranked by fluency, reader#1 is paired with reader #11, reader #2 with #12, and so on. The teacher selects text that is appropriate for the weaker reader and they engage in series of controlled interactions. The teacher times the transitions. Students get points at each step.
What texts could you use in a PALS program? What do you see as the challenges for implementing this? What would the benefits be?

38. FORI Redesigned whole-group basal lesson, grade 2
Teacher reads story to children; they discuss
Echo and partner readings over the course of the week
Rereadings at home (15 minutes)
Free reading (SSR) minutes
This procedure has been effective for second graders especially for those who began second grade at least at the primer level.
Fluency-oriented reading instruction is a newer fluency program that is currently being tested in a longitudinal classroom study. Pilot work for this procedure was done here in Georgia. FORI is an extension of earlier work by Jim Hoffman – the oral recitation lesson. The difference is that FORI adds free reading to the mix. The neat thing about it is that it is a relatively easy way to build in fluency activities with core program materials.
FORI was tested in second grade classrooms with the second grade basal –even though many of the students began the year below grade level. In the pilot study, there were very good results as long as the second graders began the year as primer-level readers (only about half a year below grade level).
It is a fairly simple lesson plan: over the course of the week, the children start by listening to and discussing the story, and then use various strategies to practice reading it at school and at home. In addition, students read self-selected texts, usually in partners, from a classroom library.
FORI is currently being studied in an experimental design. Researchers are testing FORI against traditional instruction and against a wide reading intervention. We’ll look for published results of those studies soon.
At any rate, to what extent would FORI be useful? What benefits and barriers do you see?
Stahl, S., Heubach, K., & Cramond, B. (1997). Fluency-oriented reading instruction. Washington, DC: NRRC.

39. What do these classroom programs have in common?
There is some form of modeling and assistance, either by the teacher or a peer
Repetition is planned and organized
There are varied “performances” over time
Fluency Development lesson, PALS, and FORI all have certain things in common: they are systematic in that they have a specific protocol; they are consistent with regular classroom practice in that they are planned according to an instructional week; they use regular classroom materials.
The difference is in the schedule and in the mode of performance. They all have quite specific daily schedules. And they all ask children to read to specific people over the course of the instructional week.
Think about the instruction you are observing in classrooms. To what extent are you seeing systematic practice, specific schedules, and planned performances to build fluency?

40. Whole-class fluency work
Current Practice
Whole-class fluency work
What are the strategies?
Are they assisted or unassisted?
How consistently are they used?
What evidence do you have of their effectiveness?
Where are teachers struggling?
Think about the teaching practices you are observing, and take some time to consider them against these whole-class fluency models.

41. What about in needs-based groups?
Repeated Readings
Assisted Readings
Tutoring
There is also a fairly large literature examining fluency in more specialized settings. I hesitate to call them interventions, because they are not really intensive enough to be intervention programs in my book. They are more like needs-based strategies. Again, for a review of intervention programs that target fluency, please consult the Oregon and FCRR websites.
We’ll look at three fluency-building strategies that I think could be used for needs-based groups and that will be a part of any real fluency intervention program.

42. Repeated Readings
Teacher selects a passage that is challenging for the child.
The child reads it aloud while the teacher times and notes word recognition errors.
The teacher charts time and errors.
The teacher reviews the challenging words.
The child rereads (with continued charting) to a criterion of rate or repetition.
There are many specific versions of repeated readings, but there is no evidence that any one “version” is better, so let’s think about them more generically. In general, here are the components of repeated readings:
Teachers choose a passage that is fairly challenging.
The child reads it aloud, and the teacher keeps track of errors and time.
The teacher charts the time, and then reviews problem words.
The child rereads.
The goal of repeated readings is transfer to new text; over time, the first reading of a new text should be faster. So if a child reads his first text at 60 words per minute, then through repeated readings increases his rate to 100 wpm, the hope is that when he starts a new cycle, his first reading might be at 70 wpm.
Here’s what it might look like.

43. 2:00
1:50
1:40
1:30
1:20
1:10
1:00
0:50
0:40
Reading Time in Minutes : Seconds
Number of Times I Read the Same Passage

44. 2:00
1:50
1:40
1:30
1:20
1:10
1:00
0:50
0:40
Week 1, Passage A
Reading Time in Minutes : Seconds
Number of Times I Read the Same Passage

45. Week 1, Passage A Week 2, Passage B 2:00 1:50 1:40 1:30 1:20
1:10
1:00
0:50
0:40
Week 1, Passage A
Week 2, Passage B
Reading Time in Minutes : Seconds
To what extent are teachers using repeated readings? Are they tracking students progress?
Number of Times I Read the Same Passage

46. Assisted Reading Neurological Impress
Choral reading technique with teacher tracking and reading into child’s dominant ear.
Reading while Listening
Children listen to a taped reading while they track. They practice and perform a selection.
Closed-caption TV
Closed captioning activated while children watch regular programs. They then practice and perform.
Computer-assisted
Children read text in a digital environment with the option of listening to words or portions.
Several assisted reading techniques have been tested with struggling readers. All involve repeated assistance, but they differ in type.
What do they have in common?
In what ways would they be useful?
Remember that these procedures need careful teacher monitoring. For children struggling with fluency, simply giving them a tape or a computer is unlikely to be effective. We have to build in some specific setting in which the child must read the text aloud to someone in order for each of these conditions to enhance children’s engagement and commitment. Children working in a listening station may build comprehension or vocabulary but are unlikely to build fluency.

47. Paired Reading with a Tutor
Child chooses a book
Child and tutor begin to read chorally
Child signals desire to read alone
Tutor provides words that child miscalls
Child and tutor reread sentence chorally
Child continues reading alone
Paired reading, tested by Topping, is a form of fluency-based tutoring that could be used with minimum training. It would be especially appropriate if you have parent volunteers in your school.
Paired reading is simply a procedure for a child and tutor to use to facilitate oral and support oral reading.

48. Current Practice Needs-Based Fluency Work What are the strategies?
Are they assisted or unassisted?
How consistently are they used?
What evidence do you have of their effectiveness?
Think about what teachers are doing during small-group time in second grade and for struggling third graders. Are they taking advantage of this window of opportunity for building fluency?

49. What about fluency intervention?
Wolf, M., & Katzir-Cohen, T. (2001). Reading fluency and its intervention. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5,
Lastly, I want to consider intensive fluency interventions. I don’t really consider the procedures we’ve reviewed so far as interventions, because I think they are really best practice for all children who are reading between late first and early third grade level. I want to describe the definition of intervention contained in Wolf and Katzir-Cohen’s piece, and if you’ll remember, that is the source of the definition of fluency we considered earlier.
Remember that they defined fluency as dependent on automaticity at the letter and sound level, the word level, and the sentence level, and that fully developed fluency as effortless decoding, adequate rate, and accurate prosody to allow attention for meaning construction.
Children who are seriously in need of fluency intervention (as opposed to children who will benefit from improved classroom fluency instruction) are likely to need support at all of these levels. They’re the children with real reading problems not caused by poor curriculum and instruction. Generally, they might suffer from the Double Deficit: that is, problems with storing and retrieving phonological information about words in their memory AND problems with retrieving words in general, or problems with naming speed. These are the children whom I would classify as developmental dyslexics rather than garden-variety struggling readers. Developmental dyslexia occurs naturally in about 2% of individuals whereas acquired dyslexia is the result of head trauma or stroke and is even more rare.

50. Connectionist Models Reading Writing Speech Context Processor Meaning
To think about these disabled readers, we need another model. This is the Adams model I showed you several months ago. It is different from automaticity theory, from self-teaching, and from stage theories because it shows that all of the components of language processing work together during reading. You’ll see arrows that go in both directions, meaning that information or activation from one area feeds processing in another one. And the workings of each of these processors contribute to the establishment of memory for individual words and the reader’s speed of access to those words, which we call the lexicon.
Here’s what Wolf and Katzir-Cohen claim that really resonates with me:
Orthographic
Processor
Phonological
Processor

51. (Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001, p. 220)
“The unsettling conclusion is that reading fluency involves every process and subskill involved in reading.”
(Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001, p. 220)
A reasonable response to this conclusion is to design intensive fluency interventions that involve every process and subskill in reading.
That’s why I really view the work we’ve reviewed prior to now as effective instruction rather than intensive intervention. For the most part, that work only involves repeated exposure to texts with varying levels of assistance. It does not involve work on phonology, on orthography, or on semantics and syntax. And children who have developmental dyslexia (which of course is a tiny group in any one school) will likely need more than just repetition at the text level.
Their problems could be about phonological and orthographic processing.
Their problems could be about accessing semantic information quickly.
Or their problems could be about syntax – they could have trouble establishing phrases quickly.
My goal here, in presenting some problems in intensive intervention in fluency, is simply to make you a skeptical consumer of intensive intervention programs and to whet your appetite for more information about intervention next year.

52. An intensive fluency intervention is likely to attend to more than one component of fluency.
What I want you to get from this is a notion that even though better instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency will prevent you from classifying almost all of your children as reading disabled, repeated reading is not going to be enough for a true developmental dyslexic. We are likely to need highly specialized approaches that deal with all of the components of reading: letter recognition, phonemic awareness, word recognition, and oral reading fluency.

53. What next? Consider Your Focus
What do the available data tell you about children’s fluency achievement?
What materials are available for use in fluency instruction?
What do the available data tell you about teachers’ fluency practices?
This time of year necessarily brings renewed attention to fluency. There is likely to be good news and bad news.
In my experience, however, when curriculum and instruction in basic, low-level skills (phonemic awareness and phonics) are effective in a school but fluency is depressed, then the “fix” is pretty simple – increase the amount and quality of reading practice in classrooms. There are many ways to do this, and you are likely to be able to choose a method that is consistent with the materials, grouping configurations, time, and staffing that you have.
My advice is that you get on it quickly; you can rapidly decrease the number of second grade children who have adequate word power but suffer from a lack of reading practice. And that’s an important school-level goal.

54. Anticipation Guide Yes No
Oral reading accuracy is a robust predictor of reading comprehension.
Fluency intervention should begin as soon as we measure oral reading fluency.
Fluency intervention should employ grade level and challenging texts.
We should measure silent reading rate because skilled reading is silent.
Accurate and automatic oral reading is necessary but insufficient for comprehension.
Let’s revisit the anticipation guide. Any changes?