Six Ways to Boost Reading Fluency with Any Text
Have you ever heard second grade referred to as a ‘bridge year’ in reading instruction? Second-grade teachers have the unique task of preparing students for comprehending the complex texts of third grade and beyond. However, students often come to second grade with a bunch of phonics and phonemic awareness practice. A gap must be bridged, and reading fluency is the ticket!
Reading fluency practice allows students to begin reading in a way that helps them comprehend. Through fluency work, students can retrieve sight words faster, decode words more smoothly, and retain what a sentence means when they read it. Today, I have six simple ways that you can practice reading fluency in your classroom. You can do these activities with any texts that you have on hand.
Partner Reading
Partner reading is a great way to get in some fluency practice. Students alternate between reading one page and listening to their partner read the next page. The back-and-forth reading and listening works on reading fluency and listening comprehension in a couple of different modalities. The skills required to comprehend a text when you are reading it are a little different than what your brain needs to do to comprehend a text that you are listening to. This activity allows students to do both!
Additionally, when students are partner reading with someone who is a slightly more advanced reader, they also get a great example of what fluent reading sounds like. I recommend mixed ability groups as often as possible if your students are going to partner read.
Speed Read
In the olden days, fluency work in the classroom used to be in asking your students to read as fast as possible. I’m thankful that (for the most part) we have gotten away from this practice. Reading a text as quickly as possible is not the most effective way to grow a student as a fluent reader. They aren’t focusing on comprehension, expression, or other fluency aspects.
However, one area where speed comes in handy is with sight word memorization. The quicker students can retrieve site words from memory while they are reading, the quicker they will be fluent. Speed reading cards with high frequency and sight words printed on them is a great way to build fluency over time.
Reader’s Theater
Reader’s theater is great for fluency work because it requires that students get into character. When they are playing someone else, expressive reading really comes into play. Give your students a reader’s theater script and let them go to town!
For second graders, I recommend reader’s theater scripts with only 2 to 3 characters. I also like using the Piggie and Elephant series by Mo Willems. Those books only have two characters and it’s easy to ask your students to read as a play instead of prepping a script. The ‘You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You’ series is also great for partner reading or putting on a performance.
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Silly Voices
A great way to build expression in reading is to ask your students to read the same text in a variety of voices. Ask them to read one page as sad as they can. Then read the next page something as happy as possible. Or, ask students to alternate between ‘robot reading’ and ‘regular reading’. Then, ask them to discuss the differences!
Recorded Readings
One of the most impactful ways to grow a student as a fluent reader is to have them listen to what they sound like and reflect! This is easily done through recorded readings. You can use the voice recording app on almost any device, or go to a free website like this one.
I do recommend that students use headphones for this activity. It can be embarrassing to listen to your self read, so try to provide some privacy! And give your students a self-reflection page after reading so they can think about what they can improve on.
Intonation & Phrasing Cards
Phrasing simply means reading the texts in chunks and changing your voice appropriately. When students are emergent readers, it is common for them to read a text word by word. But after time we want them to read a sentence all the way through, pausing at commas and other punctuation marks.
A great way to target the skill is to give students short chunks of text to read the time. I like to do this through task cards, but you also could pull out some books at a slightly lower reading level and have students read page by page. Sometimes the best way to increase fluency over the course of a longer text is to practice in shorter spurts.
Fluency Centers
Everything you see in this blog post comes in my fluency center kits. I have kits for each season of the year, plus an evergreen set that can be used in any month! These activities can be paired with any books in your classroom library. Happy reading…and happy fluency growth!