Research School Network: Teaching Primary Children to be Fluent Readers By James Gamble, EA Early Years and Primary Reading

Reading fluency is often referred to as the bridge from word recognition to comprehension and supports making reading meaningful. When pupils read fluently, they read accurately at an appropriate speed, (Automaticity) and with stress and intonation (Prosody). Reading fluently also frees cognitive resources to focus more on comprehending a text.

In Key Stage 1 we devote time each day to teaching Reading (Phonics) and giving children the skills to ​‘tackle’ reading fluently. However, in Key Stage 2 we can become guilty of skipping this stage in favour of teaching comprehension strategies when researchsupports the need of fluency, especially for those who are disadvantaged.

After consulting the EEF Improving Literacy Guidance Report in Key Stage 2, and some of the recent work by Christopher Such, we chose to implement a framework using guided oral reading and repeated reading across all of the schools in The Mosaic Partnership Trust. By introducing a daily 20-minute fluency lesson we have set the ambitious target of all children becoming confident, fluent, and prosodic readers.

To put it simply, we carefully selected a text and taught fluency every day.

If reading something new, such as an unfamiliar word, sentence, or piece of text, it is likely it will have a greater cognitive load. If a child encounters an unfamiliar word and must decode this (breaking it into parts) or have the meaning of it explained, then it limits the capacity of working memory. This could then prevent them from processing the sentence they have read. (More on working memory here).

This is why choosing an appropriate text is important. The evidence suggests that we select a piece of text that would take a minute to read, where the class can accurately read at least 90 – 95% of the words per minute.

1. The teacher reads aloud a presented text to the pupils, fluently.
2. After reading, the teacher discusses the text with the pupils using a visualiser to present it. This allows them to highlight and pre-teach vocabulary as well as more challenging words.
   
3. The teacher re-reads the text, this time with prosody while the pupils follow using their own text in front of them.
4. Pupils now repeatedly read the text independently to each other in mixed ability pairs whilst the teacher provides feedback and encouragement.
5. Teacher pauses the reading. As the children develop their fluency the teacher rereads the text, this time teaching prosody and pausing to discuss why they have read it this way.
6. Pupils then continue repeated reading whilst being encourage to use prosody.
7. Finally, pupils perform the text to each other usually one sentence at a time.

This approach was first introduced in September and since then we have seen children’s reading attainment rise in Key Stage 2, with more children reading age-appropriate books. Additionally, we were able to bring more children in Year 2 out of the phonics scheme sooner than we have done in previous years, due to fluency being a barrier. We will look to closely monitor the impact across all trust schools as we move through the remainder of this academic year.