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Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction
Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2005 by Stahl, Steven A, Heubach, Kathleen M
All deviations from the text were considered errors for the purpose of this study. We did not distinguish between meaning changing and non-meaning changing miscues in our analysis for higher interrater reliability.
Results. The results from the checks (see Figure 6) suggest that students made significant progress in both rate and accuracy because of the practice (comparing the read story with the unread and reread stories) and made progress over time (comparing the unread stories in November, January, and May). This progress was most pronounced from November to January, suggesting that the bulk of the children's reading growth occurred during that time period. This is similar to the results from the informal reading inventory given during the first year. We found that students made a gain of a full year in the four months between September and January and somewhat less than that between January and May.
Looking at growth over time at each level, as presented on Tables 1 and 2, it seems that there were different patterns of growth in rate and accuracy among children with different entering abilities. Children reading at the highest initial levels, second-grade level or higher, generally made little improvement in rate over the year as suggested by their reading of the unread selection. These students were generally reading the material at or above an instructional level of 95% accuracy (or a 5% or lower error rate). There simply was not much room for them, to grow.
Students who began the year reading below a second grade instructional level showed different patterns of growth. Again concentrating on the error rates for the unread selection, those children initially reading at the first-reader level dropped their average error rate from 9% in October to 6% in February and May. This improvement suggests that they raised their instructional level to that expected at their grade level. The error rate of children reading at the primer level in October dropped significantly on the unread selection. But the error rate of children who began reading below the primer level remained very low.
The results on the growth of accuracy mirror the pretest-posttest results. This program seems to be highly successful for children who begin the second-grade year with a reading level at or above the primer level; that is, for children who can recognize a simple corps of words. In Chall's (1983) stage model, these would be children who are at the Decoding stage or higher.
Although children reading initially at a second-grade level or higher did not make gains in accuracy, they did make gains in rate, especially between the October and February sampling. Children at all levels at or above the primer made average gains of at least 10 words per minute from October to February. Between February and May, gains were inconsistent. Some groups of students read at somewhat lower rates in May than in February. The fall-off of those children who initially read at a first-reader level was dramatic, from 75 to 62 words per minute from February to May. An even larger fall-off occurred on their reading of the reread selection. This maybe nothing more than a problem with a particular passage or a somewhat different selection of students at different times due to absences. This was the smallest group (9 or 10) and most susceptible to attrition effects. However, the average reading rate of even our most able readers, those initially reading at a fourth-grade level or higher, grew from 104 words per minute in October to 119 words per minute in May, suggesting that even these able students made palpable gains.
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