12:4 Fluency

When and Where Did You Find The Word? Today as I was writing up my Qualitative Reading Inventory Report for LTED 626, I came across "words correct per minute and reading fluency rate" on the scoring sheets.  I thought that the term fluency would be a fun and very important word to discuss on my vocabulary blog. 


What the Word Means? According to the Ministry of Education and Youth, Fluency can be defined as "the ability to read text with accuracy, rate, and prosody that develops over time".  They elaborate and state that "when readers have this ability, they recognize words effortlessly and read with expression and meaning.  They do not have to concentrate on decoding, and thus, are able to focus on comprehension."
Retrieved at: http://www.expanding-educational-horizons.com/PDF/LiteracyMiniguides/Fluency%20EDITED.pdf

Level of Familiarity: As a graduate student in the field of literacy, I am quite familiar with the term.  In LTED 600 & 609, we discussed numerous times how strong word recognition and decoding skills are a major component of comprehending a text.  If our students can't decode words, getting to meaning is going to be difficult.  My student in pre-clinic struggles with her automaticity and fluency.  She stumbles through words on a consistent basis & I have been working with her build word recognition skills that will allow fluent decoding of texts.  I have found "Reader's Theater" to be a very powerful method of enhancing my students accuracy, rate, and prosody.  Rehearsing and performing for the younger children at clinic gave my student an authentic purpose for rereading the text multiple times. 


Do You Want to Know this Word Well, if so Why? Absolutely! This word is imperative as a literacy specialist.  Fluency is an essential element of every reading program and is one of the main characteristics of good readers and an indicator of students with reading comprehension problems. I think that those who have to devote a sufficient amount of time and energy to decode are compromising the important task of making sense of the text.  It's a really important strategy that we must teach because it is a building block of early literacy.


Do You Want Others to Know this Word Well, If So Who and Why?  As reading specialists, it's imperative that we all are knowledgeable and have a firm understanding of this word.  I think its important to remember that we cannot judge reading proficiency of our students solely on their fluency.  We have to continually remind ourselves that fluency is just one cognitive process that affects the quality of comprehension.  Too often teachers place students in reading levels, grouping them for instruction, based on their assumed proficiency.  This unfortunately is determined by how fluent they sound, which tells very little about how well they comprehend.