How to Improve Reading Fluency

Reading fluently is the ability to read a piece of text quickly and with precision, and to then express yourself clearly and effectively.^{[1]XResearch source} Developing reading fluency takes a great deal of regular practice. With patience and dedication to your studies, though, you can help your students dramatically improve their reading fluency and become more comfortable reading and speaking with accuracy and speed.

Part 1

Part 1 of 4:

Working at the Letter Level

1
Teach the most frequently-occurring letters first. The first step in teaching your student reading fluency will be for him or her to learn the alphabet. However, teaching the alphabet in alphabetical order may not be as productive as teaching him/her letters that are most frequently encountered first. This way your student will become more familiar with those letters early on and learn to recognize and pronounce them with greater ease.^{[2]XResearch source}
- Teach the sights and sounds of each letter in the alphabet in the following order: a, m, t, p, o, n, c, d, u, s, g, h, i, f, b, l, e, r, w, k, x, v, y, z, j, and q.
- Choose a few letters per day to focus on while occasionally reviewing ones you worked on before to assess progress.
- Focus on lower-case letters before learning upper-case letters, as these occur much more frequently in written text.
- Familiarize yourself with the sounds of letters, rather than the names of those letters.
2
Practice connecting sounds and letters.^{[3]XExpert SourceSoren Rosier, PhD
Teacher & Education ResearcherExpert Interview. 1 May 2019.} Once your student has a basic understanding of the alphabet, you can practice quizzing him/her on individual letters. This will help your student understand all the possible sounds a letter can make.^{[4]XResearch source}
- Say the sounds a letter makes out loud.
- Have your student listen to the sound and then select the correct letter that corresponds with that sound. You can use a group of flashcards with letters on them, or the keys on a keyboard to identify the correct letter.
- After a few rounds, try switching it around. Hold up a flashcard with a letter written on it and have your student vocalize the sound that that letter makes.
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3
Advance to letter pairings that sound like other letters. Many students struggle with letter combinations that sound like other letters. For example, the pairing "ph" that produces the "f" sound of phone can be very confusing. Likewise, students may not understand how the letter "c" can be used in both "car" and "circuit." Students will need to understand the basic alphabet sounds and shapes before advancing to letter pairings like this. However, these letter pairings are essential to cover before moving on to whole words.
- Spend some extra time with these letter pairings. Practice teaching them both ways: having students identify the sounds those letters make together and also having students identify the letter pairings that a given sound would be made by.
- Give students specific words for context so that they understand when and how those letter combinations are used. This can be a good transition into focusing on identifying words.
4
Progress at a comfortable pace. If your student is gaining a clear understanding of the shapes and sounds of letters fairly easily, then by all means push him or her to continue advancing through the alphabet. However, if your student is struggling with the alphabet, you may need to slow down and spend more time focusing on pronunciation and recognition.^{[5]XResearch source}
- Some students may need as much as 1.5 hours spent on each letter before developing a firm understanding of that letter.
- Pushing your student to progress too quickly can result in that student lacking a firm understanding of the building blocks of words. That student will only have problems when he/she advances to working on complete words.
- It may be necessary to repeatedly review past letters. Quiz your student and teach them the letters they were struggling with again if necessary.
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Part 2

Part 2 of 4:

Decoding and Identifying Words

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Start putting letters together into simple words. Once your student has learned letters fluently, it's time to start building words out of those letters. Start out slowly, working on short, simple words at first. As your student gets more comfortable you can progress to longer, more complex words.^{[6]XResearch source}
- Say a word out loud.
- Show your student a flashcard with that word written on it.
- Use the word in a sentence.
- Have your student say the word out loud while looking at the flashcard.
2
Apply some of the common rules of phonics to your lessons.^{[7]XExpert SourceSoren Rosier, PhD
Teacher & Education ResearcherExpert Interview. 1 May 2019.} Your student may struggle with short and long vowel sounds. Teaching your student some of the most common rules of phonics may help him/her develop a better understanding of how words sound and why. Don't get too bogged down in teaching the rules, but showing your student some sample words and explaining why a given word sounds a certain way can help him/her understand and apply those rules to other words.
- One vowel between two or more consonants usually produces a short vowel sound.
- Two vowels between two or more consonants usually produces a long vowel sound.
- When a one-syllable word ends with a silent "e" (like bake, dime, etc.), it usually produces a long vowel.
3
Practice sight word recognition. As your student gets comfortable reading and sounding out simple words, you should progress to sight word recognition. This will help your student learn how to read on his/her own without sounding out words, and with practice, it will improve your student's speed and efficiency.^{[8]XResearch source}
- Read a word out loud.
- Have your student look at a list of words and choose the correct word.
- Once your student has a firm grasp on this, you can try switching it around. Show your student a flashcard with the word on it and have him or her sound out the word aloud.
4
Teach the meanings of words. Part of teaching reading fluency should include teaching what words actually mean.^{[9]XExpert SourceSoren Rosier, PhD
Teacher & Education ResearcherExpert Interview. 1 May 2019.} Reading a word on the page will only go so far if your student doesn't know what those groups of letters and sounds actually mean. You can do this by helping your student associate words with an image, with the hope that eventually your student will be able to make that connection on his or her own.^{[10]XResearch source}
- Start showing the written word paired with a picture or symbol of that word.
- Use the word in a sentence.
- Ask your student to sound out the word while looking at it on paper. Then ask your student to use the word in his/her own simple sentence.
- Once your student gets a firm grasp on this, try showing him/her a list of several words. Then say a word out loud and show the picture or symbol of that word, and ask your student to choose the correct word from the list of words.
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Part 3

Part 3 of 4:

Learning at the Text Level

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Have your student start grouping words. Once your student has a strong grasp of recognizing, decoding, and pronouncing individual words, start having him/her string words together. Your student doesn't have to be ready to read and speak full sentences just yet, but being able to read chunks of text instead of individual words will help get him/her there more quickly.
- Aim for your student to read and interpret four or five words at a time and understand their context, rather than focusing on (and getting bogged down by) every single word.
- Once your student is capable of reading and interpreting short strings of words, start forming short, simple sentences.
- Focus on connected text. Make sure the word strings you teach your students make sense when paired together, even without a larger sentence for context.
2
Progress to longer sentences and short paragraphs. Once your student can read short sentences, he or she will be ready to start putting sentences together into basic paragraphs. This may be challenging at first, as even a short paragraph will look intimidating to students who have just mastered four or five word sentences. However, with patience and practice, your students will be able to start reading increasingly-long paragraphs and understanding their meaning.
- A good way to transition into reading paragraphs is to have students learn to read several individual sentences and then put those sentences together into a full paragraph which they can read. Being able to reread this paragraph out loud will help improve fluency.
3
Measure your student's correct words per minute. A good way to gauge your student's progress is to measure his or her correct words per minute. This simple learning strategy tests your student's ability to get through a paragraph while also alerting you to any words that he or she is still struggling with.^{[11]XResearch source}
- Time your student while he/she reads out loud for 60 seconds.
- Write down any words that your student stumbles over, pronounces incorrectly, or takes more than three seconds to pronounce.
- After 60 seconds, mark on the page where your student began and ended. Then count the number of words he or she got right versus wrong, which will give you your student's oral reading fluency rate (number of correct words per minute).
- Make and use flashcards from the list of words your student struggled with.
- Practice improving your student's fluency by listening to them read out loud for at least five days each week. Keep track of your student's progress and try to improve his/her oral reading fluency rate every week.
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Part 4

Part 4 of 4:

Practicing Good Reading Habits

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Have your student practice reading when he/she is most awake and alert. If your student is not sufficiently awake and alert in the mornings, see if you can rearrange the student's schedule to work on reading fluency in the early afternoon. Try to gauge each student's individual habits and patterns to determine what time of day works best for that particular student.
- Trying to practice reading while your student is too tired will be very unproductive. Reading requires an alert and engaged student.
- Reading out loud is the best way to practice and improve fluency. Older children can read silently and then be asked to read a passage out loud periodically.^{[12]XTrustworthy SourcePubMed CentralJournal archive from the U.S. National Institutes of HealthGo to source}
- Consistent mistakes on a certain letter or string of letters mean you should review them with the student.
2
Practice efficient reading strategies. Once your student has gotten comfortable with basic text reading at the paragraph level, you can start teaching him/her strategies to read more efficiently and quickly. This should only come after a basic understanding has been developed, though, or your student could potentially miss out on important aspects of reading sentences and paragraphs.
- Have students skim the page over before you start reading. Teach them to look for headings, bold text, and bullet points, as these typically contain the most useful information.
- Teach your students to avoid enunciating each word internally. This will slow down the reading process significantly and may cause your student to lose the context of the rest of that sentence.
- Skim over "unimportant" words like conjunctions (and, but, or), prepositions (with, as, etc.), and articles (the, a, an).
Reading fluency should be practiced on a regular schedule. You should spend at least 10 minutes per student each session, though you can spend longer amounts of time working together if this is feasible. Hold reading sessions at least three times each week and try to stick to a consistent schedule.
4
Encourage your student to read at home. Reading fluency can only go so far in the classroom. In order to develop true fluency, your student will need to practice his or her reading skills at home.^{[13]XExpert SourceTristen Bonacci
Licensed English TeacherExpert Interview. 21 December 2021.} Have him/her spend time reading every day, and talk about what your student has read during your in-class meetings.^{[14]XResearch source}
- Tell your student to pick a book or newspaper at their reading level or a little bit above it.^{[15]XExpert SourceTristen Bonacci
  Licensed English TeacherExpert Interview. 21 December 2021.}
- Ask your student to talk about the stories he/she has read at home.
- Have your student keep a list of words that he or she struggles with while reading and look them up.^{[16]XExpert SourceTristen Bonacci
  Licensed English TeacherExpert Interview. 21 December 2021.}
- Spend some time working on the words that your student is having the hardest time with. Make flashcards and work slowly at improving your student's understanding of the words, their meanings, and their sounds.
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Tips

Look at a piece of text as word groups, not as individual words. For example, "The young man stopped at the door before entering" is nine words but when you read in groups, you might look at the sentence in three groups: "The young man" then "stopped at the door" then "before entering".
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Practice reading, and reading out loud, every day.
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Teach your student to move his/her eyes steadily across the page while reading. As the eyes move forward, the brain will learn to quickly grasp the meaning of text.
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