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Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction

Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2005 by Stahl, Steven A, Heubach, Kathleen M

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* Children will be supported in their reading through repeated readings. This was the key aspect of the reading program. Children read each story numerous times-through echo reading at school, at home with their parents, with partners, and by themselves. The repeated reading component of the program was intended to provide practice so that children would develop fluent and automatic reading. Samuels et al. (1992) and Rasinski (1991), among others, suggest that students develop automaticity through repeated exposures to words in context. Repeated readings have been found to effectively improve the oral reading and comprehension of normally achieving students (e.g., Martinez & Roser, 1985; Taylor, Wade, & Yekovich, 1985) and of disabled and developmental readers of various ages (e.g., Dowhower, 1989; Rasinski, 1989).

More Articles of Interest: 5 SUREFIRE STRATEGIES for Developing READING FLUENCY - Brief Article; From Phonics to Fluency; Reading Fluency: The Whole Is More than the Parts; Developing reading fluency with repeated reading.; What Research Has to Say About Fluency Instruction

* Children will engage in partner reading. Partner reading provides an opportunity for students to read connected text within a socially supportive context. This context should both motivate children to read well and provide a supportive environment to aid the development of reading skill. For these reasons, partner reading is used by both traditional educators and those who adhere to a more holistic perspective (Routman, 1991; Vacca & Rasinski, 1992). Partner reading was used for two primary reasons. First, it offered an effective alternative to round robin reading for increasing the amount of time that children spend reading orally. In round robin reading, children spend only a small portion of the reading period actually reading text (Gambrell et al., 1981). In partner reading, children spend considerably more time engaged in reading text. A number of studies (e.g., Topping, 1987) have found that such approaches can increase the amount of engaged time spent in reading as well as encourage children to read more difficult material. second, partner reading allows teachers to monitor children's reading progress by going around the room and listening to them read. In the lower grades, teachers often organize repeated readings as a paired reading activity.

* Children will increase the amount of reading that they do at home as well as in school. Since the school day is limited in length, we thought children would gain significantly in reading proficiency with some practice at home. Anderson et al. (1988) found that even small differences in home-reading practice could make large differences in children's reading achievement. Because the home circumstances of our children differed dramatically from school to school and from child to child, we tried a number of approaches. Several teachers connected the home-reading program with Book It(TM), a commercial readingincentive program. Other teachers included reading as part of the child's homework. One school was involved with a Reading Millionaires project (Baumann, 1995; O'Masta & Wolf, 1991). In this project, the number of minutes read by students in the school was tabulated, with the goal being one million minutes of at-home reading school-wide. The time spent in our project reading at home was added to the number of minutes that the school as a whole read. In addition, as will be discussed below, children were given structured assignments to read portions of their basal reading book at home as part of the lesson structure.

Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction

Journal of Literacy Research, Spring 2005 by Stahl, Steven A, Heubach, Kathleen M

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