fluency

At a certain point in a child's reading development we start the focus on fluency and one of the signs of a struggling reader is stilted, slow reading even after several years of reading instruction. The Australian Curriculum says that children should be ‘practising fluency’ from foundation the foundation year and ‘using fluency’ from year 1.  I’m really sorry (ok, not sorry) but what on earth does that even mean?   As teachers we are often left to our own devices to interpret what fluency act…

If you teach in Australia you are a little more than half way through the first term of 2022.  You’ve gotten to know your students and have identified their strengths and weakness in reading.  For some children you will have noticed that they can ‘read’ but they are lacking fluency.  

The first thing to note is that fluency is not an activity we do or a specific skill to develop, it’s the product of great reading instruction across a range of areas.  However, a quick search online for fluency a…