Fluency

We all know that reading fluency is an important part of becoming a good reader, but there are many components to fluency.  One of those important pieces of reading fluency is accuracy.  Having good accuracy is the ability to read the text with very few or no mistakes.  Accuracy truly is the most essential skill of reading fluency.  If a child is “reading” a passage quickly, but they are skipping over or changing every other word, they are not getting the full meaning and will not be able to comprehend what they have read, which is the main purpose of reading.

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There are many factors that go into improving accuracy. 

First and foremost, students need to be able to decode and read words quickly.  Explicit phonics instruction is so important in improving accuracy when reading.  If students cannot quickly decode words, they will continue to struggle while reading.  Students also need to be able to quickly read undecodable sight words in order to improve their accuracy.

• Develop letter-sound fluency.  Students must know letter sounds quickly.
• After students are fluent with letter sounds, they need to know how to blend them together to read decodable words.
• Students need to be able to quickly recognize and read sight words.

Strategies and Tips for Improving Accuracy 

• Use letter sound timing sheets and word timing sheets to help students increase their fluency.  Grab these FREE Letter & Word Timing Sheets.
• Practice sight word fluency.
• Use fun pointers, finger highlighters, highlighter strips, etc. to help students stay focused on the word they are reading.
• Encourage students to look for parts they know in a word.
• Do not let students practice reading words incorrectly.  If you are focusing on accuracy, immediately stop a student when they mispronounce a word.  Say the word correctly.  Then, have the student repeat that word before continuing.
• Teacher Tap Method – While listening to a student read, tap a pencil or your finger on the table when the student makes a mistake.  When they hear the tap, they will go back and reread to fix their error.  Praise the student for the correction.
• Students need to listen to themselves read.  If they do not know that they are making mistakes, they will not be able to fix them.  Whisper Phones are great for letting students hear themselves read.  It’s also very helpful to record them reading and have them listen to it.

Here are some materials that I use in my classroom to help students with improving accuracy in their reading.

PHONICS READING MATS

SENTENCE TREES

FLUENCY PHRASES

As students become stronger at reading sight words and phonetically spelled words, they will not have to invest all of their thinking into decoding.  They will be able to transition into improving their reading comprehension.

Reading fluency is the ability to read accurately and with expression.  What better way to practice reading fluency than by using poetry?  Poetry has a rhythm and melody that is perfect for practicing reading fluency.  We all know the importance of rereading when it comes to practicing fluency, but rereading can be boring.  Using cut apart poems is one of my favorite ways to have my students practice reading fluency.

I give each student a mixed up poem.  They cut the strips apart and work to put the poem into the correct order.  Guess what they have to be doing the entire time that they are working on putting the poem in order?  They have to be rereading it and rereading it over and over again.  They also reread it with a rhythm and expression that helps them to figure out the order of the poem.  While they are putting these in the correct order, we can discuss rhyming words and how they will align in a poem.  This activity also lends itself to discussing capitals and punctuation.  The students can get clues about the order of the lines by looking at where the capitals and ending marks are on each strip.

Want to try using fluency poems in your classroom?

I created a packet of 20 fluency poems that can be used in whole group, small group, or in an independent work station.  Each rhyming poem comes with a color and black/white version of the completed poem, mixed up poetry strips, and a matching sheet for gluing on the final poem.

I personally always begin using these in a whole group setting.  After students get the hang of it, I like to copy the poems and put them in an independent work station.  The strips can be laminated and reused if you want to save on paper usage.

Click on any of the pictures above to head over to my Teachers Pay Teachers store and check out these poems.