Jackie Barrington



Oral Reading Fluency

Part of a Balanced Literacy Program

Jackie Barrington

Simon Fraser University

Getting in Touch with Literacy

Vancouver 2003

Definitions:

Fluency is the ability to read easily and well with a sense of confidence and knowledge to know what to do when things go wrong. With this ability comes a sense of control and confidence, and often a knowledge of what to do when the reader gets bogged down or entangled in text – Karen Cole’s web page University of North Carolina.

Fluency refers to the acquisition of smooth rates of processing speed in reading outcomes (e.g., word identification, word attack, and comprehension, (Wolf, Miller, Donnelly, 2000).

Fluent readers are able to multitask. As they read, they can decode, comprehend, retain, produce information because of reduced cognitive demand for word recognition (NRP, 2000; LaBerge & Samuel, 1974).

Prosody is a linguistic concept that refers to such features in oral reading fluency as intonation, pitch, stress, pauses and the duration placed on specific syllables. These features signal some of the meaning conveyed in oral language. (Carroll, 2000)

Automaticity is the ability to call words quickly and accurately. (LeBerge & Samuels, 1974). When a word is retrieved rapidly from long-term memory,

the process is often triggered by well-developed schemata or prior knowledge that the reader has developed for a word.

Automaticity refers to the ability to perform complex skills with minimal attention and conscious effort (Samuels & Flor, 1997). Automatic processing is fast.

Non-automatic processing is slow (Logan, 1997). Logan associated speed, effortlessness, autonomy and consciousness to automaticity.

Children tend to read high frequency words fast because they see them often in print. They tend to stumble on low frequency words – ophthalmologist, fastidious, idiosyncrasy etc.

At Risk Dysfluent Readers

• Readers who are unable to read fluently and who are often referred for remedial help (Rasinski, 2000).

• A dysfluent reader can be defined as one who has not reached automatic word processing skills. One who fails to make higher order semantic and phonological connections between words, meaning, and ideas (Wolf & Katzir- Cohen, 2001).

• They cannot read, so they do not like to read. Reading is laboured and unsatisfying, so reading experience is limited, and because they have not read much, they have little experience with vocabulary, sentence structure, text organization and concepts of academic “book” language (Moat, 2001).

• Sakari, (1997), noted that struggling readers are less apt to be active readers when they do read. They do not interact with the text as good readers do.

• The National Reading Panel (2000) found that poor readers learn more about words and good reader learn more about prosody of the passages (NRP, 2000; 3-17).

• No matter what their perspective, there are few ideas more widely accepted than that reading is learned by reading (NRP, 2000, 3-21). At risk dysfluent readers do not generally engage in reading (Stanovich, 2000).

Assessing Reading Fluency

Reading Rate

• Read text in a normal manner. The text should be at or slightly below grade level in difficulty

• Time the reading, child reads for about 60 seconds.

• Count the number of words read

• This is the reading rate per minute.

Grade 1 – 80 words per minute

Grade 2 – 90 words per minute

Grade 3 – 110 words per minute

Grade 4 – 140 words per minute

Grade 5 – 160 words per minute

Grade 6 – 180 words per minute

Adults read about 300 words per minute

If the rates are below these levels, the child may be having difficulty with fluency.

Formula for reading rate per minute: Total number of words read x60/number of seconds read.

Should we expect these rates from our students? Trent and Traun (1997) found that:

• The fastest Braille readers read 84 to 103 wpm.

• These students were exposed to Braille from preschool.

• Children who started to read print and switched to Braille were the slowest readers.

• The authors concluded that is it difficult if not impossible for those who start to read print and switch to Braille to catch up to sighted peers, or those who have been reading Braille from preschool.

Ways to Develop Fluent Reading:

• Model fluent reading

• Encourage children to listen to the phrasing, rate and expression or volume

• Talk about passage after reading asking questions such as how did I express fear, love, hate, anger, danger etc.

• Have children pattern reading a passage in different ways.

Previewing: Reading a text and then have children read the same text

• Shows child how passage should be read

• Points out any unfamiliar words

• Read a passage, have children follow along

• Children read the passage after the teacher

Repeated Reading (RR)

Children are asked to practice reading a passage until they achieve a predetermined degree of fluency (words per minute)

Samuels (1979) used this strategy with learning disabled students. Children who were struggling readers, were able to reach 85 words per minute.

The important finding here is that children were able to transfer this skill and read passages that they did not practice on.

Dowhower (1987; Herman 1985) These researchers validated Samuel’s (1979) original findings that RR can help to improve student’s fluency, word recognition and comprehension skills,

• According to Dowhower (1989), repeated reading is a proven instructional tool and findings from research can be translated into practical suggestions.

• Although there is much to be learned about the rather simple strategy involved, there is evidence to show that it is a viable instructional tool.

• Young, Bowers and MacKinnon (1996) used an assisted reading technique, where the child reads simultaneously with a fluent reader in order to model not only pronunciation but also the prosodic features of connected text. (as cited in Wolf et al. 2000).

• Paired Reading (Heckelman 1969). Students read with a partner. After several reading, roles are reversed.

• Debating with rebuttals a good strategy for paired reading

• Older children can read to younger children

• Pairs can read text into a tape recorder

• After listening to the tape, pairs can decide if and when to re-tape

• Poems are useful for pair to perform. Poems are short, they often have a rhyming scheme

• Good activity to encourage parent to try is to read for five minutes nightly.

• Stress the FIVE minutes

Reader’s Theatre:

• A way for groups of students to use their reading voices to perform a story or script for an audience. Children do not have to memorize lines they practice their scripts and read from the script. Opitz & Rasinski (1998) Goodbye Round Robin – 25 Effective Oral Reading Strategies.

Pre-recorded Passages:

• Next best thing to a live person

• Audiotape the text by a skilled reader, have the struggling reader follow along with the tape. Marie Carbo (1978) called these talking books

• Avoid commercially taped books, they may have too much sound effect that may be distracting for some readers

Choral Reading:

• Reading along in groups. Not as popular as in previous years. Class can be arranged in various ways, boys /girls; birthdays – January to June and July to December

• Different parts of text assigned to each group

• Entire group may read some parts, individuals may read other parts

• Students develop ownership for their reading

• Fosters a sense of community

• Short poem for young children written on a chart

• Teacher reads poem first, discuss the poem and then have children read poem several times

Marking Phrase Boundaries:

• The ability to read fluently is the ability to read in syntactically and semantically appropriate phrases.

• Meaning is embedded in multiple words, chunks of text or phrases, not in individual words.

• Schrieber (1980, 1991) theorized that many readers characterised as dysfluent suffer from a poor ability to phrase text appropriately while reading.

• May be due to a lack of sensitivity to semantic and syntactic cues that mark phrase boundaries in text.

• Note the sentence: The young man the playground equipment.

• This may appear to be nonsense until you realize that man can be a verb. The young/ man the playground equipment.

• Place various sentences on the board or overhead and allow children to experiment with the phrasing that meaning is expressed by the phrasing of the words

Today/ Kevin and I turned out for track./ Mr Kurtz/ the coach,/ gave us a pep talk/ about the importance of taking part /and doing/ the best we can./

Today Kevin and I/ turned out for track./ Mr Kurtz the coach,/ gave us a pep talk/ about the importance /of taking part /and doing the best we can./

Choice of Text:

• Choice of text can aid or aggravate fluency problems.

• Children with fluency problems are often given text that are too difficult for them (Allington, 1983).

• For fluency, choose texts that are relatively easy in terms of word recognition and syntactic complexity.

• Easy texts develop power and self confidence.

Fluency Development Lessons: (FDL) (Rasinski, Padak, Linek & Sturtevant, (1994).

• Lessons for primary grade students which supplement the regular reading program

• Last for 10-15 minutes daily

• Use a passage of about 50-100 words

• Teacher reads and discuss the passage

• Class divide into groups or pairs and practice reading

• Children in this class made more gains that another group of children using another type of reading activity

Shared Book Experience (SBE)

Holdaway (1979 as cited in Rasinski)

• Big Books - teacher discusses cover, title, illustrations and other characteristics of book and asks children to make predictions

• Teacher reads story with discussion of text

• Eventually children are given conventional size copies of the big book to practice on their own

Support Reading Strategy – done over a three day cycle

Day 1

• teacher reads a story to a small group in a fluent expressive voice

• throughout the reading the teacher asks students to clarify text information and predict upcoming events

• teacher/ children echo read the story with children reading from their own book

• teacher monitors individual readers

• provide assistance, support and encouragement

Day 2

• Pairs – good reader with poor reader

• Pairs re-read story alternating pages

• The children are then assigned a short segment (100 words)

• Children read to partner and provide help if needed

• If time permits, the whole passage is read again, reading alternate pages

Day 3

• During seatwork period, individual children read their assigned part to teacher, teacher checks for word recognition and accuracy.

Approaches for “treatment resisters” as described by Torgeson, (1998), Blachman (1994) and Rashotte (1998) cited in Wolf. Miller & Donnelly (2000)

Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary Elaboration, Orthography (RAVE-O) – A Comprehensive, Fluency-Based Reading Intervention Program – Wolf, Miller & Donnelly (2000)

• This program is designed to work with a systematic phonological analysis and blending program. One half hour for phonological awareness and one half hour of RAVE-O.

• Package contains 70 one-hour classes that run from October through March.

• Authors used RAVE-O with Phonological Analysis and Blending (PHAB) (Lovett et al. (1994) designed to be used with at risk readers in grade 1 and grade 2.

• Designed as a small-group, intensive pull-out program for second and third graders at risk for reading failure.

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