11 Reading with Fluency Strategies that will Transform your Readers

Interventions for reading fluency you can use to help your struggling readers.

Reading with fluency is one of the hardest reading strategies to teach, but with these 11 interventions for reading you can give your struggling readers the support they need to succeed. Intervention doesn’t have to be confusing and stressful! Just try out these tips and check out this Key to Stress Free Reading Intervention, and you will be amazed at how your readers are transformed.

Reading Fluency Definition

Fluency is often thought of as just reading fast. How many words can you read in one minute? However, it really means much more than that. I will be writing an in depth blog post about what reading with fluency means that I’m excited to share with you, but for now, here are the 4 main aspects:

Rate (how fast you read)
Accuracy (whether you’re reading the words correctly)
Expression (reading with emotion and inflection)
Comprehension (understanding what you’re reading)

Fluency Matters

Why is fluency important? It has the power to fuel reading momentum or burn out and stall struggling readers. Often, a lack of fluency gets students stuck and frustrated. When students do not read with fluency, they are reading too slow and are too focused on each individual word to have a good understanding of the passage as a whole. Continued mistakes when reading also contributes to this lack of understanding. When students are reading so laboriously, it is draining for them and they do not have the stamina to read longer texts. It very heavily affects motivation.

Improve reading with fluency by using these simple tips.

Reading with Fluency Strategies

Reading fluency is one of my favorite reading intervention focuses! It is where the switch “clicks” and you can see the biggest transformation in your struggling readers. Here is a great list of reading interventions that you can use to help your struggling reader build their stamina. See these blog posts for ideas on how to improve other areas of reading as well:

Modeling reading fluency is a great way to improve reading skills.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #1: Modeling Fluency

One of the first ways we can teach reading with fluency is to model it ourselves. In all of our read alouds, when we read with expression and smoothly, point it out to our students. Tell them to listen to how your voice goes up and down, and it sounds like you’re talking. Show them how “robot reading” sounds (slow-one-word-at-a-time-no-inflection), and then show them how fluent reading sounds and ask them to note the difference.

Some reading with fluency strategies include focusing on sentences.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #2: Start with Sentences

To avoid overwhelm, try starting with sentences before you jump into whole passages. Sentences are the building blocks of text, so when a student can read a sentence, they have the tools to read a passage. The picture shows the tool sentence pyramids in my Fluency Intervention Binder, which are a great way to scaffold reading sentences.

Reading fluency interventions should include some focus on sight words.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #3: Sight words

Sight words are another great way to help reading fluency. By nature, sight words are read automatically by sight instead of sounding them out. When a student stops to sound out every word, it can really slow your reader down. The more sight words a student knows, the more automaticity they can have when reading, which helps their pace. These sight word clues are a fun way to practice sight words!

A great fluency intervention is line tracking with a notecard.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #4: Line tracking (pointer, paper)

This is one of my favorite reading with fluency strategies. If students have trouble focusing on the text, try having them track the words as they read. They can use their finger, a dollar store pointer (drink stirrers word great!), or some of those fun finger gadgets you can put on your fingers (like these googly eyes). When a student needs even more focused support, use a notecard to place under each line as they read. This covers up the other text so they don’t get overwhelmed, and helps them focus on where they are reading. I love how simple this tip is! Check out these 11 Effective Strategies for Reading Intervention for more simple tips!

A reading fluency intervention can be as simple as printing on colored paper.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #5: Colored paper

Ready for a crazy trick?? Lightly colored paper helps students read better! Their eyes are able to focus on the text and take in the information better. Don’t believe me? Try it! Print your reading passages and word lists on pastel colored paper. If anything, it helps engagement as it changes it up from the normal white. I like to use this tip for testing, especially for informal or formative tests like my Comprehensive Reading Assessment.

Good interventions for reading fluency start with a warm-up.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #6: Warm-up (practice tricky words, word by word)

Warm-ups help beginning readers approach a text with confidence. Before they even start reading, go over any tricky words you think they might have trouble with. For extensive warm-ups, try these warm-up activities from my Fluency Intervention Binder. It has each passage broken up into sentences with dots under each word. Students can start slow with one word at a time, then when they are ready they can move onto the paragraph and read it fluently. This is great for readers that need that boost in confidence.

A proven way to help reading with fluency is repeated readings.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #7: Repeated readings (with cold reads and hot reads)

Repeated readings are one of the best proven strategies for reading with fluency. Start with a cold read-letting the student read the passage without any practice or prep. This gives them experience reading completely new and unfamiliar text. Then go over some of the tricky words they missed, talk about the context, practice reading a sentence or two together, and encourage smooth reading with expression. Then have them go back and read the passage again. Their hot read should improve a ton! I have plenty of repeated readings included in my Fluency Intervention Binder.

Reading activities like readers’ theaters can increase engagement and motivation.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #8: Performances

Reading for performance helps break up the monotony of repeated readings. As mentioned, reading and re-reading texts is a great way to build fluency, but sometimes students can get bored with it. Practicing reading a script for a readers’ theater or poetry performance gives students purpose for their reading. They are excited to practice reading, because they are excited to perform in front of a real audience (parents, peers, another class, etc.). When using performances and plays as an intervention strategy, be sure to encourage actually reading the script, not memorizing. Students will have the script in hand while their performing and will be reading their parts. The point is to practice reading smoothly, not to memorize lines! Here are some amazing partner plays you can use for your performances!

Good reading intervention should include fluency tracking by the teacher and student.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #9: Fluency Tracking/Student self-tracking progress

Tracking rate and accuracy is important for you as the teacher to see if your student is making progress and if your interventions for reading fluency are working. Try to do a timed read at least once every 2 weeks (every week is even better!). Time the student for 1 minute (30 seconds is ok too if you’re short on time) and keep a tally mark of how many errors they made. Count how many words total they read, and then count how many correct words they read. Write that number down in one chart for that student, to keep all of your data in the same place.

Having the student fill out their own data can also be highly effective. Try to make it as positive an experience as possible and help them get excited about improvement. This is especially great when you are doing cold and hot reads. Have them mark how many words in a cold read they read, and then how many words in a hot read after practicing. The hot read will almost always go up, so they can see immediate progress! That is so motivating for them to see that success so immediately.

A great fluency intervention is partner reading.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #10: Partner reading/Turn taking reading

Partner reading is an excellent strategy, because it involves reading, listening, and social interaction. Students can read with another student, or an adult depending on how much support they need. The readers can model fluency for each other and help each other out when they get stuck. It also breaks up the text into shorter chunks to read at a time, which is a lot less overwhelming than reading an entire text for struggling readers.

Context can help interventions for reading be more effective.

Reading with Fluency Strategy #11: Context

Last, giving context and building background knowledge can be a great intervention. It encourages comprehension and thinking about what they read (which is a component of fluency!). When they understand what they’re reading, they are better able to decode words because they make sense together. To do this, talk a little about what the text is about, read the title, look at the pictures, build their schema before reading. It will make a huge difference!

So, there are my top 11 strategies for reading with fluency! They are all so effective and help students make awesome improvement. Remember, not all students are the same, so you might have to try different interventions for each student.

If you would like some more tips and activity ideas to build reading skills, plus identify the students who are struggling, download this FREE Reading Intervention Cheat Sheet! It is a great “at-a-glance” guide to help you know how to help your students.

These reading intervention strategies and ideas will help your struggling readers!

Happy teaching and reading!

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