Child Fluency

What does it mean to be a fluent reader?  Well, to be considered fluent, a child should be reading out loud at a rate of 200-250 words a minute.  If a child reads too slowly, his reading comprehension is going to suffer.  To be a fluent reader it is necessary to sound out words effortlessly and automatically without struggling over the sounds.  In this way all of a child’s attention can be focused on the ideas of what he is reading, instead of the individual sounds in words.

One very easy way to assess reading fluency is to first give your child a grade appropriate book to read.  By grade appropriate, I mean a book that is at the level your child is currently reading.  In this way the words and concepts in the book will not be too hard or frustrating to figure out.

Then you should time your child reading out loud for one minute.  As your child is reading, count all of the mistakes he makes in pronunciation, or in adding and deleting words.  At no point in the one minute timing should you attempt to correct your child or make any comments.  Remember, you are trying to get the most accurate picture possible of your child’s reading abilities.

Once the one minute timing is up, have your child count up all the words in the passage they just read.  To figure out the reading rate, you will subtract the mistakes from the total number of words read.  For example, let’s say that a second grader named John made 5 mistakes in a 150 word passage read in one minute.  To calculate John’s reading rate you would subtract the 5 mistakes from the 150 words to get 145 words read in one minute.  You would then say that John could read at a second grade level of a rate of 145 words/minute.

One tool described to assess reading fluency was to take the correct number of words read in one minute and compare it to the reading fluency range of 200-250 words/minute.  This is a very easy way to quickly assess how well your child is reading.  Anybody can do it, just remember to take the grade level of the reading material into account.  A child who can read The Cat in the Hat fluently will not necessarily be able to read Tom Sawyer fluently.

Isa Skrobola has a teaching degree from the University of Michigan, and homeschools her seven children.  She offers more free reading fluency information at www.childfluency.com.