Reading is Fun
*Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately and quickly. Several skills help children read fluently: paying attention to punctuation, grouping words into meaningful chunks, and using expression. Fluency also requires children to use strategies to figure out unfamiliar words and to know a lot of sight words that can’t be “sounded out.”
*Children who read words smoothly and accurately are more likely to enjoy reading and to understand what they read. When fluent readers read silently, they recognize words automatically. When fluent readers read aloud, they read effortlessly and with expression. Readers who are weak in fluency read slowly, word by word, focusing on decoding words instead of understanding the meaning of what they read.
Here are some activities you can do with your child at home to help with fluency:
*Read at home on a regular basis.
*Check out the fluency activities at the website www.fcrr.org
*Practice sight words (words that don’t follow phonetic rules such as: there, their, would, because).
*Play “memory” with these word cards or, have your child make the words with plastic letters.
*Choose a story for the week. Time a one minute sample, count the number of words read correctly in that one minute sample. Help your child set a realistic goal, (2-3 words) to improve. Start at the same point the next day and time for one minute again. Repeat every few days.
*Read aloud to your child and model fluent and expressive reading for your child.
*Tape record your child’s reading of a story, play it back and discuss how it sounds.
Read Aloud Activities to try with your child:
*Partner Reading involves sharing reading. You read a sentence or half the page, and ask your child to read one sentence or half the page.
*Choral Reading involves a story that your child has read before or that is easy for him/her to read. Read the text together. Lead the reading by using expression and appropriate pacing.
*Echo Reading involves you reading one line of a poem or story and your child repeating the same line after you have read. Increase the number of lines read at one time as the child's reading improves.
*REREAD, REREAD, REREAD!