Research clearly indicates fluency is a critical component in skilled reading so therefore it should be a regular feature in our reading instruction, but is it? I mention, more than once, in part three of my blog series, choral reading, echo reading partner reads etc. Why are these activities so prevalent? Because they simply yet effectively allow children to practice the skill of reading fluently – a skill which has been described by many as the bridge between decoding and reading with meaning – a silver bullet perhaps?

Is the fuss over fluency valid?

Research indicates that disfluency is a factor for a significant percentage of our children who experience reading difficulties, meaning many of our students who are unable to comprehend the books we expect them to read are simply unable to read ‘fluently’. Why is this the case I hear you ask? The two main components of fluent reading are automaticity and prosody and if these are not well-developed, fluency is not going to happen.

Automaticity is key because it lessens the cognitive load on our pupils, which, in turn, allows them to focus on understanding the meaning of the the words on the page.

Prosody (intonation, tempo, phrasing) matters because it unearths the shades of meaning in a text and leads to a richer understanding of what is written. Prosody has actually been found to contribute to comprehension above and beyond that made by automatic word recognition.

Convinced it is worth making a fuss over fluency? Read on to find out about Tim Rasinskis’ four principles of effective fluency instruction…

1) Expert modelled reading

• Read aloud to your children A LOT with the correct prosody (intonation, tempo and phrasing).
• Record expert fluent reading on your school online platform to allow children to hear expert expressive reading at home too.

2) Assisted fluent reading

• Direct your pupils to track a text closely whilst listening to an expert read the same text fluently.
• Echo read: the expert reads a sentence or phrase with expression while the novice tracks the text. The novice then echoes back the same sentence or phrase with the same expression. High expectations are key!
• Choral read: read a paragraph of text either in groups or with partners. (This is best after the same text has been echo read.)

3) Focus on chunking (phrasing)

• Often authors do not punctuate enough; phrases and chunks are blended together as one. This leads to the meaning becoming blurred. Model where these hidden pauses are when utilising echo reading, over-emphasise them if needed.
• Use text marking with the children to make it explicitly clear where a phrase ends and where a micro pause might be needed.

4) Repeated reads

• Give time for pupils to practice reading texts repeatedly until they can read the text in a fluent manner.
• Make time for children to do performance reads, either solo, in pairs or as a whole class – it doesn’t have to be the whole text!
• Encourage ‘lucky listeners’ at home or in school so children can read short passages or poems throughout the week.

The foundations of your children’s reading success are firm – they have a robust mental model of the text, have heard an expert read, really read and practised reading the text fluently multiple times so what next? What are we building towards? Part Five outlines what the next stage might look like: how the children are now ready to Get to Grips with the text through purposeful book talk.