Read Naturally: The Fluency Solution

For over fourteen years, the Read Naturally strategy has been a highly successful solution to the fluency problems of students nationwide. Read Naturally provides a method to motivate students and accelerate their reading achievement and fluency. The Read Naturally strategy combines three powerful tools for improving reading fluency: teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring.

Picture in your mind one of your struggling readers. You would probably describe that student's reading as word-by-word, halting, slow, and laborious. Students with these characteristics associated with their reading have a fluency problem. Educators often describe reading problems in terms of fluency, and research demonstrates a strong correlation between reading fluency and comprehension. Consequently, teachers need to develop the fluency of their students.

Struggling readers do not read enough, which significantly impedes their fluency development. Students become fluent readers by reading. Yet in our elementary schools, students read an average of only five to ten minutes per day. Struggling readers read even less—hardly enough time to become proficient at something as difficult as learning to read. Struggling readers cannot or will not read independently. When asked to read quietly, they sometimes pretend. Often these students cannot read the basals and anthologies used in their classrooms. Also, poor fluency is a self-perpetuating problem. Struggling readers read so few words during their instructional and independent reading time that the gap between them and their peers continually widens.

Thus, it is clear that struggling readers need to become fluent. To do so, they need a safe, structured, and highly motivating opportunity to engage in reading on a daily basis. Research supports each of Read Naturally's three components of teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring as powerful ways to involve struggling readers in the act of reading, to improve their fluency, and to accelerate their reading achievement.

Teacher modeling, which consists of a proficient reader modeling good, correct reading for a less able reader, improves the reading fluency of students. Repeated reading improves fluency as well. Repeated reading is a strategy in which the student reads a story of 100 to 200 words many times until able to read it fluently. Finally, daily monitoring of student progress improves student achievement. The student becomes more involved in the learning process, and the teacher remains aware of each student's progress.

Combining teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring thereby creates a powerful tool to improve the reading fluency of struggling readers. Read Naturally effectively combines these three strategies into a powerful and successful program that has accelerated the reading achievement and fluency of struggling readers nationwide for over fourteen years.#

For more information, please visit our website, www.readnaturally.com, or call 800.788.4085.