How can we help kids who are disfluent?

We know fluency is important.  

We know fluent reading is the bridge to comprehension.

But.... what can we do to help disfluent readers? 

To best help a disfluent reader, we must first determine what stage the student is at.  This will help us find the best strategy for the reader.  

Is the student a beginning reader (kindergarten or first grade)?

Is the reader one who is making adequate progress?

Or, is the reader one who is struggling?

Lets look at a beginning reader first.  A beginning reader is someone in kindergarten and first grade who is attaching letters to their sounds and blending them into simple words.  To improve reading fluency for these students a teacher should:

• Spend a significant amount of time on accurate text reading
• Implement a systematic daily practice for learning to read words accurately
• Model fluent reading.
• Give students lots of opportunity to read and re-read decodable text
• Encourage students to read "like they are talking." 

Now, lets look at a reader who is on-level or making adequate progress.  These are students in grades two or higher who are average and making adequate gains. How do we keep the momentum going?  How do we maintain their progress? To do this a teacher should use:

• Choral reading
• Echo Reading
• Cloze reading
• Partner reading
• Readers' theater 
• Poetry readings

Finally, lets look at struggling readers.   Disfluent readers need a mixture of what beginning readers  and on level students need. The best way for disfluent readers to become more fluent is by reading!  These students need:

• Focus on ACCURATE text reading.
• Use decodable text
• Repeated readings 
• Systemic daily practice of reading words accurately
• Modeled fluent reading
• Encourage students to read like they are talking
• LOTS of opportunities to read text (at their level) using choral, cloze, echo and partner reading.

If you would like to know how to define fluency and why being a fluent reader important, check out the first post in the series by clicking here.  

There are a ton of great articles written by reading gurus on the topic of fluency.  Check them out by clicking below.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Repeated Reading by Timothy Shanahan via Reading Rockets

Using Poetry to Teach Reading via Reading Rockets

Developing Fluent Readers by Jan Hasbrouck via Reading Rockets

I hope you will join us next time to discover ways you can fit daily fluency practice into your schedule!