Reading fluency is an essential skill that students need to build the connection between words and texts and their meaning. We’ve already covered strategies to measure and develop reading fluency in the classroom in our previous articles.
But there’s another aspect that educators must understand before using these methods. It involves the six critical characteristics of fluency.
These characteristics can be referred to as the building blocks of fluency. They are vital in gaining a deeper understanding of students’ problems and struggles with reading fluently.
1. Pausing
Knowing when and how to pause while reading centers the student’s ability to read punctuation.
Students often pause or lower their voices right before a period, which can hamper their reading skills and thus their comprehension.
Modeling exercises are one way to teach students appropriate pausing practices around different punctuation marks.
2. Phrasing
Phrasing involves the manner in which students group words while reading. It includes learning pausing strategies in between punctuations.
Phrasing problems often occur when students clump certain words together or read sentences or paragraphs in a choppy way. This results in a decreased understanding of the text and incorrect interpretation; after all, context is everything.
3. Stress
Stress is the emphasis placed on certain words in speech. It is reflected in tone changes while speaking or reading a passage.
Placing stress on the appropriate words or syllables helps students identify the differences between words often confused with another, such as homophones.
Students who do not stress words usually speak in a monotone. This often results in miscommunication and miscomprehension of words, and low reading fluency.
4. Intonation
Another element of reading fluency where a change in tone is important is expression or intonation. This includes varying tone, pitch, and volume to make the meaning of sentences and texts clear.
Similar to stress, intonation is also reflected in the way a student speaks and understands what they are reading.
5. Rate
The rate or pace at which a student reads a passage or text also influences how well they understand it. Students shouldn’t read the text too slowly or too quickly—both could hamper their understanding of what they are reading.
6. Integration
The final characteristic of fluency involves the successful integration of all the others. Integration while making sense of the idea behind the text is one of the most important building blocks of fluency in reading.
Educators can take note of these aspects when observing the students’ read-aloud activities. They can also take the help of digital programs such as Lumos Reading Buddy. The groundbreaking online reading program incorporates research-based strategies and immersive activities to improve students’ reading fluency.
But that’s not all!
The Lumos program also tracks students’ progress through the activities and provides detailed proficiency reports. After every learning cycle, these reports can be accessed to help understand students’ weaknesses and work on them.
These tracking tools are a great help as teachers often cannot consistently monitor every student’s progress in the classroom environment. Overall, the learning cycle, tracking tools, and reports help students work on the individual characteristics of fluency.
Working on students’ reading fluency becomes much easier for educators with all these tools at hand. And if you’ve been struggling to tackle online instruction, then here’s a guide to building an effective online instructional strategy.
But there’s another aspect that educators must understand before using these methods. It involves the six critical characteristics of fluency.
These characteristics can be referred to as the building blocks of fluency. They are vital in gaining a deeper understanding of students’ problems and struggles with reading fluently.
1. Pausing
Knowing when and how to pause while reading centers the student’s ability to read punctuation.
Students often pause or lower their voices right before a period, which can hamper their reading skills and thus their comprehension.
Modeling exercises are one way to teach students appropriate pausing practices around different punctuation marks.
2. Phrasing
Phrasing involves the manner in which students group words while reading. It includes learning pausing strategies in between punctuations.
Phrasing problems often occur when students clump certain words together or read sentences or paragraphs in a choppy way. This results in a decreased understanding of the text and incorrect interpretation; after all, context is everything.
3. Stress
Stress is the emphasis placed on certain words in speech. It is reflected in tone changes while speaking or reading a passage.
Placing stress on the appropriate words or syllables helps students identify the differences between words often confused with another, such as homophones.
Students who do not stress words usually speak in a monotone. This often results in miscommunication and miscomprehension of words, and low reading fluency.
4. Intonation
Another element of reading fluency where a change in tone is important is expression or intonation. This includes varying tone, pitch, and volume to make the meaning of sentences and texts clear.
Similar to stress, intonation is also reflected in the way a student speaks and understands what they are reading.
5. Rate
The rate or pace at which a student reads a passage or text also influences how well they understand it. Students shouldn’t read the text too slowly or too quickly—both could hamper their understanding of what they are reading.
6. Integration
The final characteristic of fluency involves the successful integration of all the others. Integration while making sense of the idea behind the text is one of the most important building blocks of fluency in reading.
Educators can take note of these aspects when observing the students’ read-aloud activities. They can also take the help of digital programs such as Lumos Reading Buddy. The groundbreaking online reading program incorporates research-based strategies and immersive activities to improve students’ reading fluency.
But that’s not all!
The Lumos program also tracks students’ progress through the activities and provides detailed proficiency reports. After every learning cycle, these reports can be accessed to help understand students’ weaknesses and work on them.
These tracking tools are a great help as teachers often cannot consistently monitor every student’s progress in the classroom environment. Overall, the learning cycle, tracking tools, and reports help students work on the individual characteristics of fluency.
Working on students’ reading fluency becomes much easier for educators with all these tools at hand. And if you’ve been struggling to tackle online instruction, then here’s a guide to building an effective online instructional strategy.
