What is Fluency?
Fluency is the ability to read quickly, accurately and with expression. This skill is important for comprehension once children are able to decode text.
When developing fluency children need to be:
- reading words correctly, tracking their finger underneath the text as they read from left to right
- identifying words quickly showing increasing automaticity (not sounding out and blending every single word)
- reading with expression (prosody). This might include pitch, volume, emphasis and pausing. The reader takes information from the text to do this such as punctuation, vocabulary choices and fonts, for example.
Fluency comes with lots of practice, modelling and support (including regular small group reading sessions). Taking decodable books home for practice is a good way to build children’s fluency and confidence. The Little Learners decodable book apps have audio and recording functionality which can be helpful for fluency development.
Key to becoming a fluent reader is accurate and increasingly automatic decoding of words – Read and Grab Word Games, Bingo Games and other activities in the Little Learners toolkit will support this.
