Literacy Blogs

In the last posting, in response to a middle school teacher’s query, I explained why fluency instruction deserved attention in secondary school. I shared information showing growth in fluency during the middle school years, that instruction in fluency can accelerate that learning, and that such improvement can have a positive impact on reading comprehension. Admittedly, not all secondary students require fluency support, but most do. Since oral reading fluency (ORF) usually tops out in the 175-200 words correct per minute (WCPM) range, we should expect that an increasing percentage of kids each year will be beyond the need for fluency teaching. ...

Teacher question: I just read your piece on how you would schedule reading instruction, and while it was helpful, I'd love to hear more about what that looks like at the middle school level.  Specifically, how much do you think it is the middle school English teacher’s responsibility to cover fluency. I recently attended a Science of Comprehension Symposium and Doug Lemov shared fantastic, practical videos of secondary teachers doing wonderful whole group fluency work. How much time should be devoted to fluency (we have an 80-minute ELA block)?  Shanahan response: Great question. I’m pleased to have secondary school teachers asking, “what do ...

Teacher question: I am a literacy interventionist at an elementary school, and we use DIBELS for our progress monitoring. While I recognize the value of DIBELS as a screening tool, I have concerns about the appropriateness of the current fluency benchmarks my school has adopted. I have found some research that identifies fluency goals calibrated to reading comprehension. Studies by O'Connor (2017) and Cogo-Moreira et al. (2023) identify specific words-per-minute benchmarks to establish a cut-off point for reading speed and accuracy to obtain minimum values for comprehending texts. These wpm goals are much lower than our fluency goals. If the ultimate ...

  Teacher question: Middle school reading scores are either stagnating or dropping in my state, and they are looking at things they can do to help students improve. I’ve read the materials on the need for kids to reach a certain level of decoding to succeed in the upper grades. What do we do from here? What interventions should schools/states add to help these kids catch up on what they missed? Shanahan responds: The most likely reason middle school scores are down in your state probably has little to do with phonics instruction. Most phonics is provided in grades K-2. Doing a better job with ...

Teacher Question At our school, we test students oral reading fluency three times a year (aimswebPlus), and we teach fluency in both our Tier 1 and Tier 2 programs. I believe that I have a good understanding of how to teach fluency using repeated reading. However, one step in that process that I’m unsure of is modeling. How much fluency modeling should a teacher do and how is that best accomplished? Shanahan responds:Since the National Reading Panel (2000) determined fluency instruction to be beneficial, I’ve been queried often about it. Those questions have focused on text difficulty, amounts of fluency practice, role ...

  Teacher Question: An educational consultant came to our district and she and I disagreed over the idea of fluency instruction in the middle school. Our middle and high school classrooms are mostly homogeneously grouped, with many struggling readers three or more grade levels. She said that if we are teaching fluency, there should be a plethora of data to support it, and that all students do not need fluency work. I disagree with her, but I was not sure if I should push it because maybe we are not exactly "teaching fluency." (We are less teaching fluency, than having students practice it). If all ...

Teacher question Our school is trying to follow the science of reading. We are teaching phonemic awareness and phonics in Grades K-2 and assessing student progress in those skills throughout those grade levels. However, we don’t begin to assess or teach fluency until mid-first grade. Are we doing it right?RELATED: What about the new research that says phonics instruction isn’t very important? Shanahan response: I think it’s okay to neglect fluency instruction until later in first grade, at least with most students. However, I suspect that you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to teach your students to read disfluently. I hope I can ...

Teacher question At our middle school, two-thirds of our students are not proficient readers (55% of them read below the 30th percentile). Our staff decided that to help address this problem all our students would engage in repeated reading in each core content class once a week. This would be done with grade-level text. Teachers read the passage, students choral read with teacher, and then students read with a partner. That's it. We have been told that this way of repeated reading will help our students improve their phonics and fluency. I'm not in full agreement with this, but we have ...

Oh goodness, everybody’s least favorite topic (except maybe Tim Rasinski). What I’m talking about is fluency instruction/practice for older students… grades 4 and up, let’s say. No one gets too bent out of shape if I talk about little kids working on their oral reading, but when those young’uns reach 9- or 10-years-old that presumably is baby stuff. I get why that is. First, the research on fluency instruction has focused heavily on two groups: kids in grades 1-4 and remedial readers in grades 1-12 (NICHD, 2001). I can’t tell a 6th grade teacher that there is research showing that if she devotes ...

Teacher question: I am searching for what to do with repeated reading as a whole class, in every content area, in grades 6-8. Next year, we have 60% of our students at "at-risk" or "some risk" according to aReading (FastBridge). It recommends Repeated Reading for many of our students, so that will be our school-wide intervention: science, social studies, math, and ELA with grade-level text for every repeated reading we do in our classes. I'm torn on the grade-level text because we have kids who will not be able to read the text fluently at all. They will be reading with ...