Research School Network: Reading Fluency in the Secondary classroom – part 2 Steve Trafford’s second blog on Reading Fluency considers how we can move from the evidence into the classroom.

In my last blog I wrote about Reading Fluency in the Secondary classroom, summarising the evidence and outlining some of the classroom activities that could be used to develop fluency.

Fluency is the ability to read with accuracy, automaticity and prosody. By helping students become more fluent, we can free up cognitive energy that can be directed towards comprehension.

Fluency can be developed using activities that involve reading aloud, building on the established links between fluent oral reading and fluent silent reading.

In this blog we continue considering impactful activities, the reasons why Reading Fluency is important and approaches we can use within the classroom.

Impactful activities – an example

At Greenshaw High School we’ve identified four impactful activities, supported by evidence, that can be used in the classroom.

These activities can be deployed for the reading of a short passage or part of a text. Short passages tend to work better as it allows for more frequent practice (a ​‘little and often’ approach), and other activities can be done within the same lesson.

The four activities and their rationales are as follows:

• Modelled Fluent Reading so that pupils hear expressive, prosodic reading.
• Text Marking so that pupils think about emphasis, punctuation and phrase boundaries.
• Echo Reading so that pupils have guided practice of fluent reading.
• Paired Reading so that pupils have the opportunity for deliberate practice in a ​‘safe space’.

Why should secondary teachers care about reading fluency?

While students are likely have an abundance of opportunities to read aloud at primary school, following the transition to secondary, these tend to suddenly dry up, and many students at Key Stage 3 will get no in-school opportunities to practise reading aloud at all. This is a particularly sobering thought when we think of those students who don’t have the opportunity at home either.

Where students do get opportunities to read aloud, this may be part of an activity like ​‘popcorn reading’, or the teacher randomly selecting a student to read aloud for the class.

While this activity may feel good for confident and able readers, thrusting struggling readers into the spotlight like this can be damaging for their confidence, ultimately associating reading aloud with feelings of fear and anxiety.

This is why we give students the opportunity to practise in pairs away from the limelight of public performance.

From the evidence to the classroom

Such an approach may differ from many of the traditional lessons secondary teachers are used to – so training of staff will be a crucial factor in its success.

The EEF’s identifies Professional Development Guidance Report identifies four groups of ​‘mechanisms’ that increase the likelihood of PD activities being successful:

• build knowledge
• motivate staff
• develop teaching techniques, and
• embed practice.

The report recommends including at least one mechanism from each group.

To build knowledge, staff were presented with evidence around the benefits of developing reading fluency, and its role in supporting reading comprehension.

This also motivated staff as it helped them to understand how by developing pupils’ fluency, we free up cognitive capacity for more complex activities.

The guidance report also emphasises the importance of modelling and rehearsal as key mechanisms that help to develop teaching techniques.

For approaches like Echo Reading and Text Marking, which many secondary teachers won’t have encountered before, time spent practising and role-playing these away from the classroom is invaluable in ensuring they are implemented with fidelity.

Colleagues provide support and constructive feedback before staff use the approaches with pupils.

How does fluency development fit in with other activities in the secondary classroom?

Secondary teachers may be sceptical about an approach like this, wondering how they are supposed to find time alongside other competing demands. But reading fluency work can complement existing approaches and activities.

For example, a class doing some fluency work on Chapter 7 of Animal Farm marked up the text and noticed frequent emphasis on verbs like ​‘seized’, ​‘bounded’ and ​‘dragged’. This then led into an analytical writing activity later in the lesson, exploring Napoleon’s use of violence to suppress opposition.

Elsewhere, a class worked on a section of a speech by Emmeline Pankhurst as part of a Rhetoric unit. Hearing the teacher’s modelled fluent reading, before practising themselves in pairs, helped them to consider how the speech might be delivered for the most impact.

However, we must be careful not to forget the core purpose of what we are doing. Fluency work on Mr Birling’s speech in An Inspector Calls might quickly become more about students trying to act in the role of the pompous, complacent ​‘hard-headed man of business’.

That’s fine, but if we get too far away from the original intent of the activity, it is less likely to have an impact in the way that we want.

It has to be about the reading.