The Science of Reading: Fluency

What is it?

Fluency in reading is the ability to read accurately, with a good reading rate, and with good expression. Each of these aspects of fluency has a strong impact on comprehension. If a child is using too much mental energy to figure out or say the words, they don’t have enough left to process and understand what they have read.

How can I work on this at home?

Depending on your child’s reading level, there are many ways you can support their growing fluency at home. For true beginners, help them learn to track (point to) the words on the page as they read. Take turns partner reading pages with them. These Usborne First Library books that I linked last week are great for this. It helps kids build confidence while still giving them access to engaging stories. This is also where sight words or high frequency words come in handy, as well as rereading known words and spelling patterns. Check out my post on phonics for a video of how I review learned patterns and sight words with my four year old every day.

For kids who are beginning to grow in confidence and able to read some books independently, you can use repeated reading of familiar text (books or other things they have already read) or echo reading. Echo reading is when a fluent reader (you) reads something the way a strong reader does, then the child reads it back to you the same way. This is a great way to work on expression and to avoid kids sounding like robots when they read. This is also why reading aloud to children regularly is so important. They benefit greatly from hearing rich language read expressively to them.

As kids become more able to read many things independently, fluency is still important to develop. These readers should work on reading poetry, reading silently, and participating in reader’s theaters. Reader’s theaters are basically mini plays where each participant plays a part. These are a fun, engaging way to improve reading rate and expression, especially when you go back to the beginning of the skit and try to improve it.

Fluency Games and Resources I Recommend as a Reading Specialist

These Tap and Track sight words and sentence cards are a great way to work on building fluency without having to create your own flip cards like I did for my daughter. The brand (Really Good Stuff) is a trusted business that I often bought classroom supplies from when I was still teaching in a classroom.

This Sight Word Swat game is so much fun. I mean, what child doesn’t love using a fly swatter? This is a great game for readers who learned many phonics patterns (i.e. the sounds of ou, ue, ai) but who still need work on reading quickly…or who just want to have fun using a fly swatter. Better this than swatting randomly at your beautifully painted walls.

These Fabulously Funny Fairy Tale Plays make an engaging activity for the whole family. The text is more complex, so this is a good one for students reading at a 2nd grade level and above. I honestly can’t wait until my kids are old enough to use these. How fun would it be on a random rainy evening to put on living room plays together? They don’t need to know they’re working on building their fluency while doing it…

One Final Recommendation

As I mentioned earlier, it is essential to read aloud to your child often so that they can hear expressive reading. Short on time? Need a moment to yourself but want to ensure that your child is still doing something that’s good for them (aka not just watching tv shows alone)?

We LOVE using Tonies. In our house, we use them at rest time, leading into nap time, or just for some calm, quiet time throughout the day. These are truly ideal for those times when I need a few minutes to an hour to rest or get some work done, but I want to ensure my girls are using their independent time well. They helped immensely when we transitioned from nap time to quiet time.

Kids can easily place the figurines on top of the box themselves to change out which story they want to listen to. I think of it like the modern version of listening to books on tape. (Shout out to my own parents for giving me hundreds of those to choose from when I myself was a kid!)

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