Fluency and Comprehension
If you have not read this book you need to check it out: 7 Highly Strategies of Highly Effective Readers by Elain K. McEwan. She discusses the three prerequisites for comprehension instruction: readers must be fluent, have vocabulary already in place and background knowledge. Reading accurately is essential for comprehension but not adequate. So many struggling readers are so slow with problem solving at the word level that comprehension is greatly compromised. So often we work at the text level, but if students are having extreme difficulty with fluency, I suggest you check their letter/sound fluency and sight word vocabulary. They have to have automaticity with letters, sounds and words to decode in a fast and efficient way. Sometimes, we have to back up to the letter and word level, even with older students.
Some activities to increase fluency:
- repeated oral reading of a text at instructional level
- work with letters and words for fast sound and word recognition
- Reader’s Theater
- Paired and Choral Reading
- Listening to stories on tape prior to reading
What other ideas do you have for increasing fluency? Send them to me and I will post them.
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