Reading Fluency: What, Why,

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Reading Fluency What, Why, How
Roxanne Hudson, Ph.D. University of Washington
2006 Massachusetts Reading First Conference
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What is reading fluency?

• Accurate reading at a conversational rate with
  appropriate prosody.
• (Hudson, Lane, Pullen, 2005)
• Decoding and comprehending text at the same time.
  
• (Samuels, 2006)

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What is reading fluency?

• To do two things at once, one must be automatic.
• Word reading is the process that must become
  automatic.
• (Laberge Samuels, 1979)

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Without fluency, a reader is far less likely to
comprehend text.
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Who needs reading fluency intervention?What do
we teach them?

• Questions of assessment

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Curriculum-Based Measurement

• Answers two questions
• Is this reader reading as quickly and accurately
  as she should be for her grade level and
  educational opportunities?
• Is this reader making sufficient progress to end
  the year on target?
• An oral reading fluency score will tell you who
  is having problems.
• It will not tell you why or what to do about it.

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Questions to Guide Diagnostic Assessment

• Is your student dysfluent because she
• is slow?
• Decodes letter by letter?
• Takes too many tries to read the words?
• Doesnt read words automatically?
• Doesnt understand what she is reading?
• Is making a speed-accuracy trade off in favor of
  accuracy?

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Questions to Guide Diagnostic Assessment

• Is your student dysfluent because she
• is inaccurate?
• Missing phonics skills?
• Lacks phonemic awareness?
• Doesnt know many high frequency sight words?
• Doesnt have the oral vocabulary to match her
  decoding attempt to?
• Not using all sources of information in the text
  to determine the right pronunciation
• Not monitoring?

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Questions to Guide Diagnostic Assessment

• Is your student dysfluent because she
• is inaccurate?
• Missing phonics skills?
• Lacks phonemic awareness?
• Doesnt know many high frequency sight words?
• Doesnt have the oral vocabulary to match her
  decoding attempt to?
• Not using all sources of information in the text
  to determine the right pronunciation
• Not monitoring?

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Questions to Guide Diagnostic Assessment

• Is your student dysfluent because she
• lacks prosody?
• doesnt notice punctuation?
• lacks syntactic knowledge?
• doesnt notice phrase boundaries?
• isnt paying attention to the meaning?
• cant pay attention to meaning because of
  attention to decoding?

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• Research-Based Methods to Improve Reading Fluency
• Accuracy
• Rate
• Prosody

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Improving Reading Fluency

• Reading Accuracy, Rate, and Prosody
• The Bottom Line
• As with any skill that requires an individual
  to coordinate a series of smaller actions to
  create a unified process, it is practice that
  allows the learner to develop expertise.
• (Kuhn Stahl, 2002)

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Keep in Mind

• All three areas of reading fluency are intertwined

• Working on one area will most likely improve the
  others
• Attention to a single aspect of fluent reading
  such as rate does not preclude teaching attention
  to prosody and meaning.

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Improving Accuracy

• Early reading instruction (phonics)
• Important to make sure students learn phonics
  skills to automaticity

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Ensure fluency in subskills needed for reading

• It is not enough for children to be accurate in
  phonemic blending, letter sounds, and decoding.
• During phonics instruction, teachers must ensure
  that their students are automatic so that their
  students can apply the phonics skills when they
  encounter unknown words in connected text.
• Fluency in phonemic blending, letter sound
  knowledge, and larger letter patterns
  (phonograms) predict decoding fluency in young
  children (Hudson, Torgesen, Lane, Turner,
  2006).

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Improving Accuracy

• Early reading instruction (phonics)
• Important to make sure students learn phonics
  skills to automaticity
• Not our focus today

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Improving Reading Rate

• Repeated readings
• Timed readings

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What texts should students read to develop
fluency?

• Texts at the students instructional or
  independent reading level.
• Relatively short passages.
• Text from a variety of genres, such as stories,
  nonfiction, poetry
• Text that is motivating to the individual student

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Reading Levels

• Independent Level 96 accuracy or better
• Instructional Level 90-95
• Frustration Level less than 90 accuracy

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Repeated Reading(Samuels, 1997)

• Make sure the text used for practice is at the
  right reading level.
• Can get strong benefits from just three to four
  readings
• The more words overlap between texts, the larger
  the amount of transfer (Rashotte Torgesen,
  1986)
• Can be integrated into many different reading
  programs.

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Variations of Repeated Reading

• In order to better meet the individual needs of
  your students, you can
• Vary instructional groupings
• Vary purposes
• Vary materials
• Vary modalities

From Blum Koskinen (1991)
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What the research says
A meta-analysis of repeated readings research by
Theirran (2004) found that these elements are
critical for success

• Much more powerful if students read passages to
  an adult (ES1.37) rather than a peer (ES.36)
• Instructors should provide direct corrective
  feedback after every session
• Much more powerful if students read until they
  reach a rate and accuracy criterion (ES1.78)
  rather than a set number of times (ES.38)

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Timed Repeated Readings

• Programs with stair-stepped levels of difficulty
  commercially available.
• Connected text for timed repeated readings can
  come from anywhere. As long as it is interesting
  to the student and at the right reading level,
  you can use it.
• Good ideas for many students are nonfiction
  passages, or articles from popular magazines for
  childrenwhatever is interesting and motivating
  to the student.

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Great site to get reading probes made

• http//www.interventioncentral.org/htmdocs/tools/o
  kapi/okapi.shtml
• OKAPI!The Internet Application for Creating
  Curriculum-Based Assessment Reading Probes

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• Child version of the timing

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• Teacher version of the timing

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To conduct timed repeated readings, follow these
steps

• Preview
• The student reviews and/or practices the timing
  probe. The instructor models the correct
  responses (i.e., correct pronunciation of
  isolated sounds or of difficult words) for any
  unknown words before beginning the timing.
• Review Data and Set Goal.
• The student and instructor look at the graph of
  the previous session to review progress made to
  date and set a progress goal for todays session.
  For example, I am going to read 10 more words
  than I did the last time or I am going to work
  on making 2 less mistakes than last time.

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To conduct timed readings, follow these steps

• Student Reads
• After instructor modeling, the student is asked
  to read as many sounds or words as possible in
  one minute from his or her copy of the reading
  materials. The instructor times the student for
  1 minute.
• Instructor Records
• The instructor circles all errors on the
  instructor's copy of the page with a dry erase
  marker or wipe-off pen OR counts the errors. In
  addition, the instructor offers the correct
  pronunciations during the timed reading.

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To conduct timed readings, follow these steps

• Record Data
• The instructor or student accurately records all
  data on the student's Progress Charts.
• Review
• The instructor and student review the student's
  performance on the task, correcting errors and
  practicing the correct pronunciation of sounds
  and words. Students should be encouraged for the
  progress they have made and set a goal for the
  next attempt.

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To conduct timed readings, follow these steps

• Decisions
• If the student does not meet his or her rate and
  accuracy goals within one minute with two or
  fewer errors, the student will read that page
  again during the next instructional session and
  continue with that page until s/he masters it.
  If the student does successfully read at his goal
  rate in one minute with two or fewer errors, he
  has met his goal and reads a more difficult
  passage during the next instructional session.
• Celebrate/Support
• The instructor provides a reward any time
  students meet their goals. Students who do not
  are supported for their effort and new goals are
  set for the next time.

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Graphing Fluency Progress

• Use the graphs with students to provide critical
  information about progress and motivation.
• Always use a pencil!
• Be consistent in what you charteither the total
  words read/errors OR correct words read/errors.
  Whichever you choose, stick with it.

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Precision Teaching Materials Available

• From the State of Florida Department of Education
• Reading and Math materials, including graphing
  charts
• Go to http//www.firn.edu/doe/workforce/pdf/catalo
  g_text.pdf to order the materials.
• Look on page 42

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Precision Teaching Materials Available

• Techniques of Precision Teaching
• Item 3716 V-D1
• Part 1 Training Material Cost Out-of-State
  4.00
• Item 3717 V-D2
• Part 2 Math Basic Skills Curriculum Cost
  Out-of-State 9.50
• Item 3718 V-D3
• Part 3 Reading Basic Skills Curriculum Cost
  Out-of-State 8.15

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Graphing Fluency Progress

• Use dots for what you want to accelerate (words,
  sounds, phonograms, etc.) and Xs for what you
  want to decelerate (errors).
• Be sure to draw a line whenever something
  changesnew probe, long vacation, extra practice
  or instruction, illness, or anything else that
  might affect the students performance.
• Never connect data points across a line. Only
  connect data points that are in the same passage
  and time frame.

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Improving Prosody

• Reading with recordings
• Partner reading
• Readers Theatre

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Reading with Recordings

• Students read along as they listen to a fluent
  reader on audiotape
• Books should be at readers independent level

• Integrate reading with recordings into repeated
  readings or timed repeated readings.
• Recordings should be free of sound effects,
  music, or other distractions

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Partner Reading

• Two students or a student and a tutor are paired
  to read the same text aloud
• Readers take turns reading
• Pair a more capable with a less capable reader
  the more capable reader provides a model and
  offers support and feedback
• Equally capable readers reread text after hearing
  teacher read aloud, or after reading the passage
  during instruction
• Can also be done as repeated readings

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Variations of Assisted Reading

• Echo reading
• I read, then you read.
• Adult models accurate and prosodic reading (reads
  a line of text while pointing)
• Student echoes the model (reads the same text
  while pointing)

• Duet reading or Choral Reading
• We both read together (or as a group)

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Readers Theater
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What the research says

• Limited direct evidence of effectiveness
• Many anecdotal accounts of increased motivation
  or reading achievement (e.g., Martinez, M.,
  Roser, N.L., Strecker, S., 1998/1999 Worthy
  Prater, 2002)
• Quasi-experimental study with small sample (
  Rinehart, 1999) that found improvement in oral
  reading fluency and self-reported attitudes
  toward reading.
• Non-experimental pre-post studies (Corcoran
  Davis, 2005 Keehn, 2003)
• Unpublished dissertations (Carrick, 2000
  Maberry, 1975)

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What the research says

• So should we use Readers Theater to build
  fluency?

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What the research says

• Yes.
• Readers Theater is valuable for providing the
  motivation to read text multiple times an
  authentic reason to reread text.
• For many struggling readers, the motivating
  factor is a very strong and critical component of
  helping them develop into fluent readers.

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Benefits of Readers Theatre

• Provides an authentic purpose, legitimate reason,
  and motivation for rereading text multiple times.
• Through repeated readings, helps students develop
  accuracy, rate, and prosody.
• Helps students understand the importance of
  intonation and how it relates to context.
• Improves students comprehension of text through
  repeated readings and variations in
  interpretation.
• Requires teamwork among students.
• Sanctions peer interaction and fun.

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Readers Theater

• Choose a pre-written script or adapt your own
  from a narrative, expository passage, poem,
  speech, or other interesting text that is rich in
  dialogue.
• Make sure the script is at the right reading
  level for your students and adapt as needed.
• Highlighting tape can be used to identify roles,
  lessening the need for writing scripts.
• Read aloud the text on which the script is based
  or the script to provide modeling.
• Discuss characters feelings and how they might
  sound as they speak.
• Practice the script
• Perform the play.

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Research-based Components of Readers Theater

• LOTS of practice, which means lots of reading,
  not listening to others
• Repeated readings of text with feedbackevidence
  suggests 3 to 4 readings
• Focus on helping students think about how to read
  the text to best represent the meaning

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Ideas to Ensure Sufficient Practice

• Pair students and have them read every other
  line, then switch.
• Have all students read all of the script before
  breaking into parts.
• Divide class into small groups and give a script
  to each group to maximize the amount of reading
  and allow matching of script to reading level of
  the students.
• Do whisper reading, where all students read along
  in a whisper while the student with the part
  reads aloud.

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Readers Theater

• The first time I read to know what the words
  are. Then I read to know what the words say and
  later as I read I thought about how to say the
  wordsAs I got to know the character better, I
  put more feeling in my voice.
• (Stayter Allington, 1991)

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Radio Reading

• Similar to Readers Theatre, except with sound
  effects added to make it sound like an old-time
  radio show.
• Groups of students can create recorded versions
  of their radio shows that can become
  listening/read-along center readings for their
  classmates.

• Encourage students to generate questions to pose
  to listeners at the end of the recording.
• Radio Reading reinforces the importance of
  prosody, because listeners will not understand
  without appropriate expression.

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Radio Reading

• Read-along Radio Dramas provide a structure for
  radio reading.
• Available from Theatre of the Mind from NPR
• Recording of a radio play with full cast and
  sound effects
• A word-for-word read-along radio script and
  annotated script

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Resources and Materials

• Are found in your handout

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To sum up

• Use progress monitoring assessment to determine
  who needs fluency instruction.
• Use diagnostic assessment to determine what type
  of instruction in what area they need.
• Practice is key to building fluency.
• Repeated reading with an adult to a rate
  criterion is the strongest intervention you can
  provide.
• Motivation is critical in helping struggling
  readers get enough practice to improve their
  reading fluency.

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• Thank you!!
• rhudson_at_u.washington.edu