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All Fluency articles

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Reading aloud is one of the most important things parents and teachers can do with children. Learn about how reading aloud builds many important foundational skills, such as introducing vocabulary and providing a model of fluent, expressive reading, and find tips on how to read aloud with children at home and in the classroom, while building comprehension and helping children recognize what reading for pleasure is all about.

Learn about fluency assessment, the importance of fluency in building comprehension skills, finding the right book level for kids, effective classroom strategies like reader's theater and choral reading, and more.

Teachers do their best to improve students' fluency, but sometimes the information they have to work with is incomplete and, therefore, leads them down the wrong path. For example, silent reading or 'Round Robin' reading seem like good ways to improve fluency. But, in fact, increasing fluency requires more practice, more support, and more guided oral reading than either of these strategies can deliver.

What should fluency instruction look like? And, what can teachers do to help students whose fluency is far behind their peers'? This article should help practitioners use of fluency-based assessments and select instructional practices.

Different book leveling systems each have unique ways of describing the age- and grade-level appropriateness of books. This chart provides equivalency information across six leveling systems: Basal level/PALS, Guided Reading, DRA, Rigby PM, Reading Recovery, and Lexile.

Learning to read is a challenge for many kids, but most can become good readers if they get the right help. Parents have an important job in recognizing when a child is struggling and knowing how to find help. Here are some signs to look for and things to do if you suspect your child is having trouble reading.

Learn what reading fluency is, why it is critical to make sure that students have sufficient fluency, how we should assess fluency, and how to best provide practice and support for all students.

Screening, diagnosing, and progress monitoring are essential to making sure that all students become fluent readers — and the words-correct per-minute (WCPM) procedure can work for all three. Here's how teachers can use it to make well-informed and timely decisions about the instructional needs of their students.

View the results of the 2006 study on oral reading fluency, "Oral Reading Fluency: 90 Years of Measurement," by Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal.

Part of teaching reading is motivating the children to practice, practice, practice. Find out how to use children's poetry to encourage kids to read.

The reader's theater strategy blends students' desire to perform with their need for oral reading practice. Reader's Theater offers an entertaining and engaging means of improving fluency and enhancing comprehension.

Guided oral reading is an instructional strategy that can help students improve a variety of reading skills, including fluency. This article explains how to implement it in your classroom.

Find out how teachers can play to the strengths and shore up the weaknesses of English Language Learners in each of the Reading First content areas.

The best strategy for developing reading fluency is to provide your students with many opportunities to read the same passage orally several times. To do this, you should first know what to have your students read. Second, you should know how to have your students read aloud repeatedly.

The following are answers to frequent questions teachers have about fluency instruction.

Fluency develops gradually over time and through practice. At the earliest stage of reading development, students' oral reading is slow and labored because students are just learning to "break the code" – to attach sounds to letters and to blend letter sounds into recognizable words.

Fluency, reading in a fast and fluid manner, is what often distinguishes to observers the reading performance of a good reader from a poor reader. Find out what the research says about the two most common instructional methods for developing fluency: guided oral reading and independent silent reading.

Being a fluent reader is an important part of being a successful reader. Here is an overview of considerations related to fluency, and techniques teachers can use for promoting fluency in the classroom.

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