Is it important to focus on reading fluency in grades 4-8? Shouldn't our students be prepared to read fluently by the time they are reading chapter books on their own? And if we need to teach reading fluency, how do we find the time in the upper grades?
Reading fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and smoothly with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading. Fluent readers read with appropriate speed, accuracy, intonation, and expression (National Institute for Literacy, What Content Area Teachers Should Know about Literacy). Readers must be able to decode and comprehend a text to gather information from a text. Fluency is not just a phase or stage that we pass through in the younger grades, but something that continues to develop as we read more difficult texts. So many adolescent readers read slowly, stop to sound out words, and often reread a text several times to understand it. Sometimes, how familiar a text is, as well as its difficulty level, can affect fluency for any upper or middle grade student.
Upper and middle grades teachers need to focus on reading fluency in their classrooms for several reasons. First, they need to bridge the gap between recognition of words and symbols in a difficult text and comprehension of that text. Middle grade students should be reading 170-200 words per minute and have automatic recognition skills (Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, Fountas and Pinnell, 2006). They should also be reading with expression and making few errors as they read. One of the concerns I hear the most from teachers in grades 6 to 8 is that their students can't read fast enough and struggle to pronounce many words that should be automatic at this age.
One of the first steps we can all take to improve reading fluency in our students is to get them reading more! No matter the grade level, there is a significant difference between students reading for hours independently and having students read shorter passages out loud. In my classroom, we have started to focus on more read alouds and group reading. Not only are students reading independently, but they are hearing other more fluent readers read out loud to them. They hear other students using appropriate intonation, pausing at punctuation, and stressing particular words as they read. Another effective activity in the upper and middle grades is readers' theater. Students can read out loud together while the teacher is a coach and provides feedback as they rehearse.
While reading fluently is often practiced with more reading passages and reading out loud, it is
important to vary the type of reading. You are all in luck! I have developed a reading fluency resource that includes a variety of fluency reads that are not your average literature or informational
text. These passages require students to pause and think more about what they are reading. The texts include vocabulary and comprehension activities and are geared towards higher grade levels. Vocabulary knowledge is significant in a students ability to read fluently. Check out the blog post on Vocabulary at Its Core and download a FREE Word Map resource to use in your own classroom when helping students develop vocabulary knowledge.
If you are an upper or middle grades teacher, these fluency reads were created for you and your students. They are real-world texts and focus on higher level vocabulary terms. So often we hear that there are limited resources available online and in print as you move into the upper grades as a teacher. In a conversation I just had with a colleague a few days ago, she stated, "All the resources I can find are made for grades 3-5, but there are so few for grades 6-8." While these fluency reads would be great enrichment or challenge tasks for grades 4 and 5, they were created for practicing fluency in the higher grade levels. Check out a free preview HERE or click the image below.
