Building fluency can prove to be difficult. This difficult job can lead some teachers to worry if they may be doing it incorrectly when they aren’t seeing results right away.
Fluency is made of many components with a lot of different strands woven together. So no wonder it takes a while to teach it and to see improvement! 😁
When a teacher asks me how they can improve fluency with their readers, I usually take a breath before answering so I can explain it the best I can. It really isn’t a one size fits all answer.
Often it is helpful to work backwards when deciding what is causing the breakdown in a student’s fluency. Is it comprehension? Or maybe it is phrasing? But it also could be phonics.
Phonics plays a big role in fluency due to the reader needing to decode words quickly and automatically. And if they cannot decode quickly, fluency will definitely be affected.
For younger students, being able to blend sounds smoothly into words is key! And you may need to begin at this step with phonics activities to build their skills.
Older students may be intimidated by the multisyllabic words they are now encountering in texts. Syllable Division is the way to give them the skills they need at this level.
As students become skilled at the word level, the next step up is working on stringing those words into phrases. Reading in phrases helps students practice using expression while also reading smoothly.
Another level of fluency is connected text. When I have my students working to build fluency in connected text, I like to use repeated readings.
A key detail when using the strategy of repeated readings is to be sure the students whisper read the text out loud. They need to hear themselves and how they sound. It is a powerful strategy!
Of course, there are many other activities to help build fluency. These 3 steps have been most successful for me and my students to achieve great gains in their reading!
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