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Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction
Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2005 by Stahl, Steven A, Heubach, Kathleen M
Furthermore, as shown in Figure 3, students entering at different reading levels made gains. That is, the average child entering second grade reading below the primer level made an average of two years progress during the course of the year. The average child reading at the third-reader level in the beginning of the year made a gain of three years during the school year. Of the 85 students in the four classes, only 3 were still unable to read the second-grade passage by the end of the year.
Year Two. The second year pretest-posttest evaluations are shown in Figure 4. The yearly gains were nearly as high as those for the first year, averaging 1.77 years' growth in instructional level. Again, for each class, we tested whether the mean growth was significantly different from one year. In eight of the nine classes, the growth was significantly (p
As shown in Figure 5, children at all entering reading levels made gains similar to those made in the first year. Again, these gains were relatively uniform. Children who entered second grade reading below the primer level ended with an average instructional level of 2.25, somewhat below the second-grade level (which we coded 2.5). Of the 20 students who could not read a primer passage at the beginning of the school year, 9 were reading at a second-grade level or higher by the end of the year, and all but one could read at a primer or higher level. This suggests that this program was successful even for children who would ordinarily have a great deal of difficulty learning to read. Of the remaining 105 students who had pretest and posttest data, only 2 failed to read at the second grade level or higher by the end of the study. Both of these students began reading at the primer level and were able to progress only to the first-reader level.
Thus, for all 14 classes over the first two years of the project, students made significantly more than one year's reading growth in one school year. By the logic discussed earlier, we maintain that this indicates that fluency-oriented reading instruction is more effective than conventional instruction.
Study 2-Growth of Rote and Accuracy
To examine the development of fluency over the course of the year, we initiated a series of fluency checks during the second year. We operationally defined fluent reading as reading that is both rapid and accurate. Therefore, to examine fluency, we looked at both accuracy and rate. The purpose of these checks was to examine the effects of each lesson on children's accuracy and rate of reading the basal reading selections. We also wanted to see how readers of different entering abilities developed over the course of the year.
Participants. The participants in these sampling studies were the students in the six classes in Barnett Shoals and Oglethorpe Avenue Schools. Because there were different numbers of students in these classes during the year, there were 91 students sampled in November, 87 in January, and 89 in May.
Method. These fluency checks were conducted over a two-week period. At the end of the first week, after the teacher had finished a story, children read orally two selections of between 150 and 200 words. The first selection was taken from the story just completed; the second selection was from the story not yet read but to be begun the following day. The second week students reread the selection from the story they had just finished. For each story segment, we noted both accuracy of word identification and rate of reading. These checks were given in November, February, and May and allowed us to compare each child's reading of an unread story with one that was just completed as well as with their reading of the same story after a week of treatment. In addition, we could compare children's reading of the previously unread story, which could be considered a baseline, with their reading later in the year, allowing us to assess progress in both accuracy and rate.
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