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PSPKK1238 Comments

What do we learn about fluency from the National Reading Panel?

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TRT Podcast#5: What do we learn about fluency from the National Reading Panel?

Fluency used to be a neglected skill, but now we know that fluency must be explicitly taught. The question is … how?

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Fluency is defined as the ability to read text at an appropriate rate, accurately, and with proper expression. In the past, it was neglected because it was assumed that when students could accurately decode words, fluency was the immediate result.

We now know this is not true. In fact, we have readers who read accurately, but slowly, and that slowness is a problem because fluency is closely related to comprehension. Some people call fluency the bridge from decoding to comprehension.

According to the National Reading Panel's report, "Fluency helps enable reading comprehension by freeing cognitive resources for interpretation, but it's also implicated in the process of comprehension. Although accuracy and word recognition is indeed an important reading milestone, accuracy is not enough to ensure fluency. And without fluency, comprehension might be impeded."

The bottom line is that fluency is important for comprehension, the end goal of reading. We know this. So the point of the National Reading Panel's study was to find out, does fluency instruction make a difference in reading achievement?

To answer this question, the National Reading Panel studied articles that examined either the impact of repeated reading or some other form of guided oral reading instruction. It probably comes as no surprise that repeated reading and other related oral reading procedures have clear value for improving reading ability. These activities improve oral reading itself, but they also have a consistent and positive impact on word recognition and comprehension.

Interestingly, the National Reading Panel found that repeated reading and guided oral reading aren't just for struggling readers. They also have a positive influence on more typical students. Based on the panel's results, Timothy Shanahan tells us that successful oral reading instruction should include three things: oral as opposed to silent reading, repetition so students can improve the quality of their reading, and guidance or feedback from a listener, which could be the teacher or a peer as in paired or buddy reading.

If you're looking for a specific example of an activity that fits this criteria, in his followup article to the panel's report, Shanahan delineates "Pause, Prompt, Praise." So this is how that works: When the reader misreads a word, the listener should pause and wait until the next phrase ending or punctuation point to see if the reader self-corrects the mistake.

If the reader does not self-correct, the next thing you should do is prompt. Guide the reader to decode more carefully or to self-monitor for meaning. So you could say, "Look closely at this word and try again," Or "Did that make sense? What should it say?" If one of those prompts doesn't work, just tell the student the word. You should not give more than two prompts for self-correction.

And finally, praise the student for reading fluently, self-correcting, or reading correctly with your guidance.

Here are some final thoughts from Timothy Shanahan in his article, The National Reading Panel Report: Practical Advice For Teachers: "Oral reading fluency instruction provided learning benefits to students in a wide range of grade levels, particularly when they were practicing oral reading with materials written at an instructional or frustration level. Instruction in which students read portions of text allowed repeatedly with feedback from a peer, parent, or teacher helped students to become better readers. These improvements were evident with word reading skills, oral reading fluency, and oral and silent reading comprehension."

I hope this has given you a few things to think about when it comes to building fluency. Next week, we're going to talk all about what the panel had to say about teaching vocabulary.

You can find the show notes for today's episode at themeasuredmom.com/episode5. Talk to you next week!

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Related links

  • The National Reading Panel Report: Practical Advice for Teachers, by Timothy Shanahan
  • National Reading Panel’s report

Partner Plays: Reader’s Theater Scripts for 2 Readers

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Filed Under: Podcast, Science of reading, Fluency Tagged With: first grade, second grade, third grade

You May Also Enjoy These Episodes:

How to structure the reading block in a science of reading classroom The best decodable book series for a tight budget 5 things to remember when getting started with a sound wall
What did the National Reading Panel say about teaching phonics?
Vocabulary and the National Reading Panel

Reader Interactions

8 Comments

  1. Allison Lawrence

    July 28, 2020 at 5:09 am

    Thank you! Your materials are a find for me!
    Actually, the most difficult stage in my practice is revision and editing. I don’t know why kids don’t like to do this so much. This is a key stage in learning how to write correctly, but in fact, I rarely see a child consciously trying to find errors. Perhaps I should try to change the approach to “fix three mistakes, and I will do the rest”.
    I also really liked the stage of publication as a presentation of what was written to the public. It teaches children how to present their work. Great! I’ve never thought about how important the look of what is written can be.

    Reply to this comment
    • Anna G

      July 31, 2020 at 7:13 am

      Thanks so much for listening, Allison! I agree that revising is a tough one. It really helps to do a lot of modeling so they see how natural this can be.

      Reply to this comment
  2. Reyna

    March 5, 2020 at 9:05 pm

    I really enjoyed reading your transcript for the writing videos. I especially loved the idea of giving kids a pencil with no eraser. I also have some students that write a few sentences and before you know it, they have erased everything on their page. ☹️

    Reply to this comment
    • Anna G

      March 6, 2020 at 7:07 am

      Yes, I’ve been there! It also helps to model crossing out when you are writing in front of your students.

      Reply to this comment
  3. Yan

    March 4, 2020 at 7:18 am

    Dear Anna,
    I enjoyed reading your transcript for the writing video. Thanks! Looking forward to previous and future videos. Keep it up!

    Best regards,
    Yan

    Reply to this comment
    • Anna G

      March 6, 2020 at 7:13 am

      Thank you so much, Yan!

      Reply to this comment
  4. Colleen

    March 3, 2020 at 4:38 am

    Hi,

    Thanks you so much for all of your wonderful resources!

    I am beginning to create readers for children based on my structured literacy program and I am wondering where you find the ‘clip art’ that use in your resources? Where can I find pictures to use for the readers? Is there copyright around using these? Do I have to create my own illustrations?

    I am going to sell these, however the entire profit will be donated back to the school I teach at.

    Thank-you,

    Colleen Earle
    St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School
    Kingston, ON, Canada

    Reply to this comment
    • Anna G

      March 4, 2020 at 6:40 am

      You can usually purchase clip art on Teachers Pay Teachers that can be used commercially. That’s where I buy mine; just be sure to check the terms of use. 🙂

      Reply to this comment

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