Considering Reading Fluency: Scaffolding Struggling Readers With Social Studies Texts

• In Event: Considering Literacy Learning: Thinking About Texts, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension

Abstract

Fluency is an integral component of reading development and text comprehension; as such, it is central to the literacy curriculum. Its development is an important contributor to comprehension and a key to ensuring student access to a wide range of reading material. And, since the reading of a wide range of materials improves not only reading itself but expands students’ conceptual and vocabulary knowledge, fluency can also contribute to the closing of the achievement gap between more- and less-successful readers. As such, its development can be seen as a fundamental issue of equity (Authors, 2022).
However, fluent reading is often considered to be nothing more than a label for accurate, automatic word recognition (e.g., Rasinski, Yates, Foerg, Greene, Paige, Young & Rupley, 2020), a (mis)understanding that has been driven, in large part, by a system of assessments or fluency programs that overemphasize students’ reading rate at the expense of their comprehension. The dominance of this perspective has meant that the perceived importance of fluency in the reading process is lessened. Unfortunately, by focusing exclusively, or even primarily, on accurate and automatic word recognition, students can also develop a skewed view of what skilled readers do.
The above position is problematic both in its portrayal of fluency’s role in the reading process and the negative impact it can have on instruction. In fact, while research indicates that disfluency is a factor for a significant percentage of students’ who experience reading difficulties, we argue that fluency instruction needs to be placed in the proper perspective if it is to support students’ ability to comprehend (authors, 2022). To ensure effective fluency instruction, it is essential to remember that two components of fluent reading are integral to literacy development: automaticity (which encompasses accuracy; LaBerge & Samuels, 1974) and prosody (Benjamin & Schwanenflugel, 2010). By recognizing that fluency is more than automatic word recognition, we can better ensure students are able to construct meaning from text (Rasinski et al., 2020).
In terms of overall reading development, we have found that reading fluency best develops in conjunction with the supported reading of connected text, rather than waiting for students to establish a baseline of accurate word recognition (authors, 2022). In other words, by scaffolding students’ reading, we have found they are able to consolidate what they have learned about decoding. Further, we have often seen students whose decoding skills are fairly well developed when words are presented in isolation experience difficulty applying what they know to connected text. Rather than holding them back and hoping that they will make this transition independently, these students have been shown to make greater progress with a gradual release of responsibility approach (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). In fact, such scaffolding allows students to read text that is more challenging than they would be able to read independently, to consolidate what they have learned about word recognition, and to develop their fluency more effectively than does working on word recognition alone.

Authors

• Melanie R. Kuhn, Purdue University

• Grace Pigozzi, Purdue University - Northwest