Reading Accurately to Understand (Fluency)
Why This is Important
Fluency is reading text accurately and with understanding. It is a critical skill for independent reading and comprehending text.
Goals for Strong Readers
- Understand what is read.
- Recognize words accurately and automatically.
- Use appropriate expression while reading based on the context and punctuation within a text.
Quick Activity
When reading a familiar story or passage, try having your child use different voices. For example, have your child read the story in a mouse voice, a cowboy voice, or a princess voice.
More Activities and Games
- Use a less familiar story or text and read small chunks of words, using your finger to track what you are reading.
- After you finish, let your child echo what you just read, tracking the words with his or her finger.
- Encourage your child to use the exact same speed and voice tone you used.
- This is a great activity to use with poetry.
Select a never-before-read text. This can be a short story, a decodable reader, a poem, or several paragraphs from a chapter book.
- Time your child reading from start to finish. You can use your smartphone timer, a stopwatch or the second hand on a clock.
- Discuss any words that were read incorrectly before your child reads again.
- Time your child multiple times as he or she reads the entire piece. Pay close attention to speed and accuracy.
- Write common phrases on notecards. Examples: to the park; you and me; here we go; where is he.
- Have your child practice reading the cards individually.
- When your child can read the phrases fluently, lay cards out side-by-side to make a train of phrases and have your child practice fluently reading a longer version.