Two of the major components of reading fluency are accuracy and automaticity. When students are able to quickly decode a text, they can focus on understanding the meaning behind the words. Students who are unable to read words accurately and quickly require explicit fluency interventions. However, keep in mind that rate (or speed) alone is not the key to fluent reading. As a student begins to increase his or her reading rate, make sure that other fluency components (accuracy, phrasing, expression) are improving as well. Once a student reaches the goal rate for his or her instructional reading level (not grade level), then it is important to intervene in other areas (such as expression, or even comprehension) instead of focusing on interventions that continue to increase reading speed.
Roxanne Hudson (2011), a nationally recognized reading expert, writes:
Many struggling readers fail to gain reading fluency incidentally. In contrast to skilled readers, they… need direct instruction in how to read fluently and sufficient opportunities for intense, fluency-focused practice incorporated into their reading program… Without reading practice, fluency does not increase, which makes reading laborious, and the cycle continues. (p.177)
Hudson, R.F. (2011). Fluency problems: Where and how to intervene. Handbook of Reading Interventions, R.
O’Connor & P. Vadasy (Eds). Guilford Press.
This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to develop your student's accuracy and automaticity. As you read, consider which of these interventions best align with your student's strengths and needs in the whole learner domains.
The following excerpt is sourced from O'Connor, R., & Vadasy, P. (Eds.). (2011). Handbook of reading interventions. New York: The Guilford Press.
In repeated reading, a common form of fluency intervention, a student reads the same connected text multiple times. There are many variations of repeated reading, ranging from reading connected text a specific number of times (Homan, Klesius, & Hite, 1993) to reading until a defined rate has been reached (Herman, 1985; Samuels, 1979). Researchers have studied repeated reading with students reading independently (Dahl, 1979), or with assistance from a peer (Mathes & Fuchs, 1997), an adult (Vadasy & Sanders, 2008a), or an audio tape (Shany & Biemiller, 1985). Repeated readings have been studied with average readers, struggling readers, and students with disabilities (Chard et al., 2002; Meyer & Felton, 1999; NRP, 2000). Positive effects have been found for practiced (Samuels, 1979) and unpracticed (O’Connor, Whit, & Swanson, 2007; Rashotte & Torgeson, 1985) passages…
Goal setting and corrective feedback are important elements to include in repeated reading intervention. Students can set a goal for the amount of time they think it will take to read a passage or the number of errors they will make (Eckert, Ardoin, Daisey, & Scarola, 2000). After reading, the teacher provides feedback on whether students met the goal(s) and asks students to graph the scores...
Corrective feedback can take several forms. In partner reading, peers are taught to monitor the reader’s accuracy as they listen and to prompt the reader to decode any miscues with unknown words (McMaster, Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006; Vaughn, Chard, Bryant, Coleman, & Kouzekanani, 2000). Alternatively, the teacher can provide the correct pronunciation of words while the student is reading (Mercer, Campbell, Miller, Mercer, & Lane, 2000), or conduct a scaffolded correction procedure on miscues after the student is done reading (Vadsasy & Sanders, 2008a). This correction procedure includes increasing levels of support that begin with referring to a letter sound card as a product; encouraging the student to read each sound, saying the whole word fast; assisting with segmentation and recoding of multisyllabic words; and finally telling the nondecodable word and asking students to reread it.
Explicit Instruction
If you are intervening to support your students' ability to read accurately and automatically, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:
Activity A: Repeated Readings
Teacher chooses an instructional level passage for a student to read multiple times. With each reading, the student should increase her accuracy, rate, and expression. "We are going to read this passage three times. The first time we read it, I want you to focus on reading it accurately."
Repeated Readings in Action
Watch this clip to see how to execute Repeated Reading. Notice how the teacher adjusts the objective for each "At Bat" of the passage.
Implementation note: In Repeated Readings that focus on improving accuracy and automaticity, it might be useful to time the student during every reading so you can track improvements in her reading rate. It is often helpful to set a rate goal for the student (based on informal assessment) so that the student can try to reach her rate goal.
Activity B: Classwide Peer Tutoring
The following intervention strategy was sourced from McKenna, M. (2002). Help for struggling readers: Strategies for grades 3-8. New York: Guilford Press.
The idea is to increase student involvement in learning. Each week, every student is paired with another student, and each student within that pair is assigned to one of two teams. Any reading materials can be used, including a basal reader. The tutee usually reads orally for about 10 minutes while the tutor monitors the reading, correcting errors. For the next five minutes, the tutor asks questions about what the tutee has read. The roles are then reversed. Here's a summary of the components of each 30-minute lesson:
10 minutes: Team 1 child in each pair reads aloud as Team 2 child monitors.
5 minutes: Team 1 child [is asked] comprehension questions.
10 minutes: Team 2 child in each pair reads aloud as Team 1 child monitors.
5 minutes: Team 2 child [is asked] comprehension questions.
The child who is not reading keeps score for his partner as follows: 2 points for reading a sentence without errors, 1 point for self-correcting an error. Errors include substitutions, omissions, and hesitations. At the week’s end, points are tallied. Each student’s score includes (1) points earned during the oral reading for that week and (2) points earned on a comprehension quiz covering the content the children have read during the sessions. The winning team is announced, and the children are reassigned the following week.
Teacher: "Today, we will be practicing Classwide Peer Tutoring. You will be partnered with another student, and each of you will take turns reading aloud. As Partner 1 reads aloud, Partner 2 will be listening and coding for errors. Remember that we learned that you'll keep track of three different types of errors: substitutions, omissions, and hesitations. As your Partner reads, write down the type of error on your copy of the passage, and make sure to point it out to your partner when he's finished."
Implementation Notes: 1) Be strategic about partnering students. It is best to partner students who read around the same instructional level. 2) It is imperative that you teach (and reteach) your students how Classwide Peer Tutoring works in your classroom. Before trying this strategy, make sure the students can accurately track and code reading errors.
Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught a lesson about how to engage with repeated readings:
Teacher: "You'll be reading the following passage three times. The first time you read, I want you to focus on reading it accurately."
Student reads the passage. She struggles with the first paragraph but reads the second paragraph with no errors.
In such a case, what might you do?
When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout the activity. Here are a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and students respond differently to different types of feedback.
| Level of Support | Description of Scaffold | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest scaffold | Try again! Allows student multiple opportunities to practice new skill. | "Let's hear you read that passage again." |
| Medium scaffold | Provide resources. Allows the student to use resources to figure out the answer (including helpful supports such as a specific prompt).
|
"Here are some of the words you missed. Let's go back and reread them so that you can remember them for the next reading." |
| Highest scaffold | Model, Lead, Test, Retest. Model for the student using this gradual release correction procedure adopted from Carnine, D.W., Silbert, J., Kame'enui, E. J. & Tarver, S. G. (2004). Direct instruction reading (4th Ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. | The teacher points to the misread words in the text. 1. Teacher says the correct answer: "This word is came." 2. Teacher models: "My turn." Teacher points to first word misread. (Signal.) "This word is came." 3. Teacher leads: "Let's do it together. What is this word?" (Signal.) "Came." (Teacher responds with the students.) 4. Teacher tests: "Your turn. What is this word?" (Signal.) "Came." |
If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might try to adjust the activity to your student's needs.
| Activity | Description of strategy | Script |
|---|---|---|
| Repeated Readings | Shorten it! Give students a shorter section to read, rather than reading the whole page. | "Let's try a shorter section to read." |
| Level it. Ensure you are having students read in a text at their instructional level. Switch out too-easy or too-hard texts for texts at their level. | "Let's try a different text." | |
| Repeat after me. Model the reading for students so they hear you reading accurately and automatically. Then have students repeat the section. | "Listen as I read with accuracy and automaticity." | |
| Time it! Time each rereading so students are aiming to meet their rate goal. | "Last time, you read this passage at 100 words per minute. This time, I want you to reach you goal of reading at 105wpm." | |
| Make it hot! If students struggle with accuracy and automaticity in a new book (also called a Cold Read), put out a text they have read before (called a Warm or Hot Read). This text can be used for students to practice these skills before moving to a new text. | "Here is a book you've read before. Let's try doing repeated readings in this text first." | |
| Classwide Peer Tutoring | Set it Up. Make sure to choose partners (and texts) that students are using strategically. Also, remind and review the Classwide Peer Tutoring protocol often. | "Remember that when we work with our partner, we are making sure to record errors. Let's review that process..." |
| Change the time. The original model asks for each student to read aloud for 10 minutes, but shortening the time so that each student reads aloud for 5, or even 3 minutes may be even more effective to avoid reading fatigue, and staying excited about the activity! | "This time, I'm going to ask Partner 1 to read aloud to Partner 2 for 3 minutes only." | |
| Focus in. Decide whether you want partners focusing on comprehension or on coding errors. Since it might be hard to code errors and listen to the story enough to ask comprehension questions, you might want to focus on one of these two strategies. Or, you might ask students to read the same passage aloud, so that the partner who is not reading aloud is listening for errors first, and then for comprehension. In a sense, this activity then becomes a repeated reading. | "During the first read, Partner 1 will focus on coding the errors Partner 2 makes. During the second read, Partner 1 will listen for the story." |