Reading Fluency is the accurate reading of connected text at a conversational rate with appropriate prosody. A fluent reader must have a strong vocabulary, and understanding of inflection in order to read with smoothness, expression, and accuracy. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently.
Ask kids to use a ruler or finger to follow along. Decoding is easier when students don’t lose their place as they move across a page. It’s up to the individual student how they go about this. Some may want to use a pen or pencil, others a piece of paper that they move down to cover the bottom of the page and stay focused on the sentence in front of them.
Have them read the same thing several times. When you’re trying to improve fluency, it helps to see the same text multiple times. Each reading becomes easier and motivation goes up as students experience enhanced fluency thanks to repeat exposure to words and phrases. It can also help when it comes to developing comprehension skills as readers have more opportunities to notice contextual cues.
Pre-teach vocabulary. Prime the words a student is going to see in a text and practice reading them in isolation or in phrases. You might do this via an interactive classroom based activity. Get students to use the words and then practice reading them from the board or on a piece of paper.
Crossword puzzles can be an effective teaching tool or playing a spelling game before reading. It’s much easier to read a word if it is fresh in memory.
Try different font and text sizes. If there’s a visual impairment that is causing some of the difficulty, reading larger text or text printed on color tinted paper can sometimes make things easier.
Create a stress free environment. When students are enjoying a book, anxiety and stress are reduced and fluency is enhanced. It’s also possible to hold a relaxing environment by taking away any deadlines, time-limits or assessment related goals and just focusing on classroom reading for reading’s sake.