. Fluency | The Reading Clinic

Fluency

Increase Your Child’s Reading Skills

Working on Fluency helps students who:

  • skip over or guess at words
  • read slowly and laboriously
  • speed through reading with a flat, expressionless tone
  • have difficulty understanding what they read

Our toolkit includes: Slingerland, Morphology, Great Leaps and Quick Reads

Student s who work on fluency strengthen

  • Accurate Reading
  • Reading Rate
  • Smooth and expressive reading
  • Comprehension

Accurate Reading
We stress accurate reading over fast reading. Students are encouraged to take the time to read correctly so that they will begin to recognize words more easily and increase their reading skills. We check to make sure they have the skills necessary to read words accurately before expecting them to read a text fluently. Reading and Spelling explains the process we use to teach kids to read if they need more support.

Reading Rate
By charting their words read per minute and errors on short passages, students become aware of their reading rate and accuracy. They also discover that reading as quickly as possible does not increase fluency. By practicing re-reading these passages, students “get the feel” of fluent reading. Students also read from their own choice of books, continuing to self-monitor by charting their accuracy.

Smooth and Expressive Reading
Students learn to parse sentences in meaningful places, mimic a fluent reader and practice different voices like a sports announcer to help them develop smooth and expressive reading. Some students work on slowing their reading down to help convey meaning.

Comprehension
The link between fluency and comprehension is well established. Increasing reading skills and learning to read more accurately and quickly helps students to understand what they are reading. Once students strengthen their reading ability, the effort it used to take to read fluently is now available for understanding what is being read. Some students read too quickly and don’t seem to process what they are reading. Once we have established that a student ‘s fluency is not impacting their comprehension, we work on even deeper skills that affect comprehension.