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Fluency

 

Definition: Fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with proper expression (National Reading Panel, 2000).

Why is it important?

  • Fluency is the bridge between word recognition and comprehension, and it is considered to be the cornerstone of successful reading.

What might I observe in students who need support?

  • Students stop to sound out many of the words.
  • Students read with little expression.
  • Students read haltingly, attending little, if at all, to punctuation.
  • Students read too quickly, attending little, if at all, to punctuation.
  • Students may stop/pause at awkward places in a sentence, distorting meaning.

Learn more

There are many ways to practice the critical skill of reading fluency. For example, try these Everyday Fluency Strategies or Student Center Activities in fluency for grades K-5. You can also organize a Reader’s Theater performance. You can learn more about Reader’s Theater in Implementation Strategies.

 

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Literacy

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Glossary

Literacy

Reading words in text with no errors. Part of fluency.
Strategies that require the reader to actively transform key information in text that has been read (e.g., summarizing, retelling).
The repetition of the initial sound of each word in a string of text (e.g., Harry the happy hippo hula-hoops with Henrietta).
Reading without conscious effort or attention to decoding.
Forming connections between the text and the information and experiences of the reader.
Strategies employed to emphasize the importance of preparing students to read text (e.g., activate prior knowledge, set a purpose for reading).
Understanding what one is reading, the ultimate goal of all reading activity. It is a complex process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning while reading text.
The act of deciphering a new word by sounding it out.
Strategies that help students engage the meanings of a text (e.g., asking questions at critical junctures; modeling the thought process used to make inferences; constructing mental imagery).
Reports factual information (also referred to as informational text) and the relationships among ideas. Expository text tends to be more difficult for students than narrative text because of the density of long, difficult, and unknown words or word parts.
Phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression. Fluency provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension.
A phrase or expression that differs from the literal meaning of the words; a regional or individual expression with a unique meaning (e.g., it’s raining cats and dogs).
A feeling of interest or enthusiasm that makes a student want to complete a task or improve his or her skills
In a syllable, the onset is the initial consonant or consonants, and the rime is the vowel and any consonants that follow it (e.g., the word sat, the onset is “s” and the rime is “at”. In the word flip, the onset is “fl” and the rime is “ip”).
Refers to the act of speaking and listening. These skills are the foundation of learning to read and write.
The smallest unit of sound within our language system. A phoneme combines with other phonemes to make words.
The ability to notice, think about, or manipulate the individual phonemes (sounds) in words. It is the ability to understand that sounds in spoken language work together to make words. This term is used to refer to the highest level of phonological awareness: awareness of individual phonemes in words.
The study of the relationships between letters and the sounds they represent; also used to describe reading instruction that teaches sound-symbol correspondences.
These are words that are recognized immediately. Sometimes sight words are thought to be irregular (words that contain letters that stray from the most common sound pronunciation; words that do not follow common phonic patterns), or high frequency words (e.g., the Dolch and Fry lists).
During shared read aloud, teachers reveal their thinking processes by verbalizing: connections, questions, inferences, and predictions.
Vocabulary is the knowledge of words and word meanings in both oral and print language and in both expressive (speaking and writing) and receptive (listening and reading) forms.