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Determining Who Needs Fluency Training

Students need fluency training when they read haltingly, word-by-word, or with little or no expression. In addition, if a student is unable to read an unpracticed grade-level passage at the 50th percentile rate of peers (according to the Oral Reading Fluency Norms table), the reader has a low fluency level.

Assessing Fluency

Read Naturally's Reading Fluency Benchmark Assessor (RFBA) is a useful, easy-to-use screening tool that helps teachers quickly find out which students fall below expectations in reading. Using RFBA, the teacher listens to each student read grade-level passages and calculates the number of words and average words per minute the student has read correctly. A low fluency score indicates the student needs fluency training and further assessment to determine any other training needs.

Fluency Needs vs. Comprehension Needs

Using the table below, teachers can decide what further assessment and explicit reading instruction each student needs, based on the student’s fluency score and most recent standardized reading comprehension score.

For students with low comprehension... For students with high comprehension...
For students with low fluency...
Assess phonemic awareness and teach if necessary.
Assess decoding and teach if necessary.
Teach fluency explicitly.
Teach comprehension.
Work on vocabulary.
Assess decoding and teach if necessary.
Teach fluency explicitly.
Challenge with high-level comprehension and vocabulary.
For students with high fluency...
Teach comprehension.
Work on vocabulary.
Challenge with high-level comprehension and vocabulary.