Literacy News

Reading: Fluency

As we continue to move through the year I want to take a moment to focus on an essential aspect of your child’s education: reading fluency. Since the beginning of the year, teachers have been collaborating to integrate reading fluency into their daily literacy sessions across Kindergarten to Year 6.

Reading fluency is more than just the ability to read words on a page; it refers to the ease with which children read. When reading aloud, fluency is affected by accuracy, rate and expression. To assist children to practise reading fluently at school, teachers often ask them to read aloud easier or familiar books. This lets children read confidently as they automatically and accurately recognise words, read at a rate that sounds more like spoken language and use a range of expression, intonation, pauses and rhythm. Fluency makes oral reading more lively and allows the author’s message to be communicated more clearly. Being able to read fluently gives readers confidence in their own ability as readers and helps them to be interested, motivated and enjoy reading.

What can parents do at home to encourage fluency? 

The best thing parents can do to encourage fluency at home is to demonstrate it. This can be achieved by:

• Reading and re-reading favourite books. 

• Reading aloud with emotion in English or your first language. 

• Using different voices to indicate the characters and narrator. 

• Changing your voice volume, tone and pace as you read different parts of a book (E.g; slowing down at a scary bit or speeding up at a tense point)

• Listen to audiobooks together with your child. Many children’s books can be downloaded in audio form from your local library.

Have fun and enjoy yourself and your child will enjoy themselves too. Don’t forget to celebrate your child’s prgress in reading fluency. Praise their efforts and improvements, no matter how small.

K-2 Reading Workshop

Happy Reading!

Chelsea McKeown

(Instructional Specialist)