When your children begin to read, you will receive many tips about introducing sight words, the benefits of reading aloud, and the importance of phonics. The one thing that most people overlook is reading fluency. Contrary to popular belief, reading fluency is an essential element of learning and developing a reading habit.

What is Reading Fluency?

Reading fluency is the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Children who read too fast, too slow, without expression, or without any regard to punctuation need help with reading fluency. When kids lack reading fluency, they are likely to have poor reading comprehension too.

The good news is, there are some simple oral reading activities for your children to develop reading fluency.

10 Ways & Activities to Improve Reading Fluency

1. Learning Sight Words with Playful Activity

   Sight words are those words that appear at a high frequency in any text. They are common words that young readers should familiarize themselves with. You can find different games and activities to help your children learn sight words with ease. You could also use wordlists to help children get familiar with sight words and learn sight word fluency.

2. Paired Reading

   Paired reading or ‘buddy reading’ is done to help children learn fluency from each other as they read in pairs. If you are a teacher with a class of varied levels of readers, pair fluent readers with those who struggle to read fluently. Children can take turns reading fluency passages by sentence or page.

3. Echo Reading

   Echo reading is a simple technique wherein the teacher highlights a sentence and reads it aloud with fluency. Then students echo the sentence that the teacher has read. The objective of repeated reading is to encourage your child to read in the same way you do, to help them understand how to read fluently.

4. Choral Reading

   Choral reading is a popular technique to improve fluency in young children. A teacher or parent reads an enlarged text repeatedly until the child is familiar with the text. Next, the child reads the text themselves until they can do it fluently. Nursery rhymes and funny poems are fantastic for choral reading.

5. Practice “Scooping” Phrases

   Just like children use word pointers or their fingers to focus on a single word when they begin to read – scooping phrases take this exercise to the next level. Practising focusing on one phrase or sentence at a time helps develop expression and comprehension.

6. Practice With Punctuation

   Regarding punctuation helps children improve their reading fluency skills. Improve your child’s understanding of punctuation marks and try to familiarize them with different punctuations. Model reading a text with no punctuation and emphasize the awkward parts of the text.

7. Watch Fluency Videos

   YouTube has a wide variety of videos that teach fluency, expression and punctuation cues to young readers. Watching fluency videos will teach your child to use punctuation properly for expression. Knowing punctuation well helps children read better and enables them to use expressions while reading.

8. Audio Books

   Audiobooks are an excellent fluency practice to help kids understand what fluent reading sounds like. Play audiobooks of stories they are familiar with and encourage your children to read along. You can find plenty of free audiobooks online or in your local library. If your children don’t wish to read along, you can simply listen to audiobooks together while travelling or before bedtime.

9. Find Reading Fluency Passages that Fit Your Child’s Reading Level

   Assess your child’s Lexile level of reading by asking their teacher or checking online. Choose books that match your child’s reading level to help them gain confidence in reading. Once they are comfortable reading books at a particular level, you can increase it to make it more challenging.

10. Practice Speed Reading & Timed Reading Games

    Timed reading for fluency improves reading speed and focus. Give your child a text to read and set a two-minute timer. Ask them to read as much as they can in two minutes and circle the last word they read. Then, ask them to read the exact text once again and set a two-minute timer. Ask them to circle the last word they read again. You will notice an improvement in the reading speed each time.

Reading is a skill that can be gained with practice and perseverance. Without fluent reading, it is difficult to comprehend the text. Hopefully, using the above activities you will be able to improve your child’s reading fluency quickly. If you have a child or a student who needs help reading with fluency, get in touch with us. Enrol in Planet Spark’s reading for kids module and help your child become a fluent reader.