Fighting Through Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read text accurately, smoothly and with expression. Fluent readers are able to read through sight words and recognize the majority of words automatically. They use phrases to read words to group words together to form more fluent sentences. When they read, it sounds smooth and is similar to their speaking tone.

When students struggle with fluency, they read slowly, sound out individual words and often sound choppy.

Imagine if you were reading the newspaper and you needed to decode every other word. Imagine if the words didn’t just flow out of your mouth? It would be rather frustrating. Students that don’t have solid phonemic awareness and phonics skills often struggle with fluency. This is due to the fact that children that struggle with decoding don’t have the ability to blend the sounds together quickly. They also may not be able to distinguish words that don’t follow English language “sounding out” rules.

Now imagine you are reading the newspaper again. You are still struggling to fluently read the words so you are already frustrated. Then, someone comes up to you when you have reached the end and asks, “What was that article about?” Ouch. Non-fluent readers deal with this struggles every day. They read, read, read. They power through difficult words and push these words together. They reach the end and…. Comprehension is lost. So my belief on fluency and reading is that that without fluency, our students are just word calling, not reading.

Please check back on Friday for my post on how you can help your child gain fluency. Before then, check out Ms. Jordan Reads for wonderful information on building your child's fluency. I love her products!



Next week’s posts will concentrate how fluency and comprehension are linked.