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Fluency Strategies

Fluency stands out as one of the most important reading skills crucial in comprehending text. Children lacking fluency in reading can neither make connections nor understand the text they are reading. It becomes very difficult for children to succeed in reading (and therefore learning) if they are not fluent. It is common that in the absence of fluency, children will also have difficulty with decoding, a fact that leads to distortion or loss of meaning of the text being read. It is imperative for educators to identify the needs of each student and come with effective fluency strategies. This paper takes the given case studies into context and explores appropriate fluency studies for each case.

Case Scenario 1

Student: Mary

Age: 8.6

Grade: 3^rd

Mary has difficulty with decoding multi-syllable words, a problem that is also common among many of her classmates. The goal is to ensure Mary and the rest of the students master the ability to decode multiple-syllable words accurately and with ease. The direct or explicit strategy instruction will be implemented in this case. The strategy has been recommended by the National Reading Panel (200) is appropriate, for it does not assume anything in relation to the knowledge and skills that learners are to acquire by themselves. Knight-McKenna (2008) explores how this strategy can be used to achieve mastery in reading multi-syllable words and offers specific approaches or methods within it that would help students master decoding multi-syllable words. One of these approaches is the syllable type instruction whereby the instructor teaches learners to pay attention or attend to English language patterns. Once mastered, this skill enables learners to decode long words accurately and with ease on their own (Bhattacharya, 2006). The approach involves the teacher identifying and describing different syllable types for the children. Here, each type of syllable identified gives the children clues on various vowel sounds and in the process helps them improve their decoding ability, subsequently improving comprehension. In implementing this strategy, the lesson plan will have a total of 6 one-hour sessions with each session focusing on one of the six syllable types namely open, closed, vowel pairs, vowel consonant, final stable, and R-controlled. There will be six sessions as there are six types of syllables so that each session addresses one type.

Case Scenario 2

Student: Emma

Age: 8.4

Grade: 3^rd

Emma struggles with reading and her ability is way below that expected of her level. The goal is to enable her to read passages fluently as is expected of a third-grader.  The syllable type instruction identified in the previous case could also be applied here since, according to Knight-McKenna (2008: p.19), “mastery of syllable types has the potential to improve reading skills on several levels”. Notably, the girl is shy and she lacks confidence and to some extent ability as is evidenced by the manner in which she struggles to read. Once she masters all syllables, she will have the confidence to read out words without hesitation out of fear that she might pronounce them wrongly. This approach will be employed vis-a-vis the direct instruction strategy suggested by Mathes et al. (2003), authors who present that this strategy works best for struggling students since it enables the teacher to give individualized attention.  The implementation plan will include 12 one-hour sessions spread over three weeks. Each of the first 6 sessions will be dictated to one syllable type so that the remaining 6 sessions will focused on evaluating the progress made and addressing any weaknesses noted.

Case Scenario 3

Student: Daniel

Age: 8.8

Grade: 3^rd

Daniel’s fluency is not at the level of most third graders and something needs to be done to ensure that he can read fluently. A good strategy to achieve this goal is repeated reading which, according to Cohen (2011) is perfect for struggling students since it helps improve reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension. The strategy is also effective for building learner confidence and the motivation to invest more of their time in efforts geared towards improving fluency. According to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (2000), repeated reading is enjoyable and easy, proving learners with an opportunity to build and integrate various skills that increase fluency in reading. In Daniel’s case, the repeated reading strategy will be implemented by selecting short texts/or passages or, for longer texts breaking them down into chunks. These can then be read in groups over five sessions, with each session focusing on a specified activity. The length of each session will depend on the length of the selected text but for purposes of efficiency shorter texts will be selected so that each session takes a maximum of ten minutes. In the first session, the entire class reads the passage and discusses the content’s meaning. In the second session, the students can be divided into groups where each student reads on his or her own, giving room for correction and support from peers. In the fourth session, each group reads out aloud while in the last session the entire class does the reading, hopefully with fluency this time. There is no doubt that Daniel’s will master his reading skills and as such be able to read fluently through this strategy.

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