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: 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 ...

Parent question: What does the research say about students and “one-minute reads” for homework. My son is expected to read the same passage every night for a week, and we mark how many words he reads per minute. We get a new passage weekly. Although I understand WPM as an assessment measure of fluency, what positive and negative effects does this practice have on students? I notice he reads as quickly as possible and hates the task. I fear this is not encouraging appropriate speed and accuracy to support comprehension while also possibly taking away his want to read. Therefore, I’m ...

Teacher question: I know you advocate fluency instruction. But what do you think of choral reading? I love to do that with my second graders, and they have a lot of fun with it. We usually follow Tim Rasinski’s advice and do choral reading with poetry. Do you think that satisfies the fluency teaching requirements? Shanahan responds: I must admit that I am not a big fan of choral reading, though to be fair this is not a research-based opinion. There simply are too few studies of choral reading on which to base a sound judgment. First my objections and then a consideration of ...

Teacher question: How expressive should young children’s reading be? We are told that oral reading fluency consists of accuracy, rate, and prosody, but our monitoring tests only consider accuracy and rate. Does prosody matter in first and second grade and if it does how do we measure it?RELATED: What is linguistic comprehension in the simple view of reading? Shanahan responds: Experts have long accepted the idea that oral reading fluency (ORF) or, these days, “text reading fluency”, improves simultaneously with reading development. As readers progress, they can read more words accurately, they are able to do this with less conscious effort (automaticity), and their ...

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 ...

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 ...