Fluency

A fluent reader reads so that the reading sounds like someone talking. A fluent reader: Good fluency has been shown to help a child understand what they are reading.
 * Pays attention to punctuation, pausing at commas and stopping at periods.
 * Uses expression especially when reading what a character in a story is saying.
 * Reads in phrases and not in a choppy, word by word way.
 * Reads just fast enough, but not so quickly that the reader is hard to understand.

Here is a document which tells a little bit about fluency and shows how quickly a child should be reading at each grade level. While rate is important, often it helps a child to concentrate on expression, punctuation and "sounding like my parent or my teacher when I read" instead of the rate. The rate shoud improve automatically with practice.



Often it helps to practice reading the same part of a story for several days to improve fluency. Here is a graph which you can use to graph a reading. Time the child for 1 minute. Have them concentrate on punctuation or expression. when the time is up, count the words he has read. Record it on the graph. Record a score for punctuation or expression. Read the same passage the next day. The child may practice in between readings.