You can give students a worksheet with 5-10 of these activities and challenge them to complete it within a set time. Have students identify the shape that matches the one at the beginning. To create a rapid recognition activity, simply come up with a short list of shapes or numbers, and place one at the beginning (see example below). These activities require students to quickly recognize objects, beginning with shapes and numbers, before moving onto letters, words, and phrases. However, you can begin to work on reading fluency with any learner, including those who are at a pre-literate or low-literate level.įor pre-to-low literacy students, rapid recognition activities can be used, even for those who cannot read fluently in their native language. When described in its most basic terms, reading fluency seems to be a skill for those who are already proficient in English phonics and grammar. Reading Fluency for Every Proficiency Level Include a few checkpoints throughout the semester to show your students the progress that they're making. You can include comprehension questions, as well as activities to measure their reading rate. My final tip for increasing student motivation in regards to reading fluency is to come up with some sort of a test to measure your students’ ability at the beginning and end of your semester, class, or fluency unit. This will allow your students to focus more on their fluency than on their comprehension of the text. Since the goal is to increase both rate and comprehension, the text that you use for your students, when practicing fluency, should be slightly below their level of reading. Focusing solely on rate-building can result in your students reading faster, but not comprehending as much of the text. The goal is for students to read more easily and comprehend more of the text. A note of caution: Be careful that you don’t emphasize rate building as much as you do fluency. They’re easy to track, which, in turn, builds motivation. One of the biggest ways to motivate students is to use rate-building activities. In many students’ minds fluency activities yield no results, whereas phonetic activities do. Learning to read in a second language can be incredibly slow, and learning to read fluently can be even more so. One of the biggest issues with teaching reading fluency, is that it can be hard to convince our students that working on fluency is beneficial to them. When students are able to reach a level of reading fluency, their reading rate is sure to increase.Ĭommunicating the Benefits of Reading Fluency That being said, reading fluency is often accompanied by an increased reading rate. It’s to teach students how to read fluently or as second nature. To clarify, the goal of reading fluency is not to teach students how to speed read. To put it simply, students who are able to read with fluency can spend more mental energy on comprehending the text. It is beneficial for general reading, as well as for students who will have to read large amounts of academic texts or take standardized tests. Reading isn’t second nature to them, and they spend more time focused on the act of reading and interpreting the lines on the page than they do on understanding what the passage is actually saying.Īs you can see, increasing your students’ reading fluency is extremely beneficial for them. That’s how many non-native English speakers read. You’re so concentrated on the act of driving that you have little-to-no time to pay attention to the directions coming from your GPS. You’re probably hypersensitive to using your blinker, braking early, etc. On the other hand, have you ever driven in a new location at night in a car that is unfamiliar to you while it’s raining? In those circumstances you’re aware of every single action you take behind the wheel. If you are reading fluently you’re probably not even thinking about the process of reading, which leaves you available to spend more time on comprehension. It’s like you drove the entire way on autopilot. Have you ever driven a route that you’ve driven many times before only to arrive at your destination and realize that you weren’t paying attention. Phonics is a major part of reading, as well as pronunciation and grammar, but one of the most overlooked aspects is your students’ general ability to read fluently.īefore we dive into the steps of teaching reading fluency, we have to first define it and make sure we’re all on the same page. If your students aren’t literate in their first language, you may have to teach them the basic skills of literacy. Teaching reading is incredibly multi-faceted.
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