Fluency Practice

What is fluency passage practice?

Practicing with fluency passages is an important part of helping your child improve with their ability to read fluently. If your child makes many errors while reading or the reading does not sound like a spoken conversation, he or she needs to practice reading fluency. Early readers spend a great deal of mental energy sounding out (decoding) the words on the page. Their reading often times sound robotic - not fluent. As a child learns the phonetic rules and can apply them with ease along with having automatic recall of all sight words, reading begins to sound more like fluent reading.

By third grade your child should be reading a minimum of 77 w.p.m. (words per minute) at the beginning of the year. Students progress to a reading rate of 98 w.p.m. (words per minute) by mid-year. As the third grade year comes to a close, your child should be reading at least 110 w.p.m (words per minute). Students considered to be challenge (cluster group) readers should set a goal of reading at least 140 w.p.m. (words per minute).

You will need to print out 2 copies of each passage (one for your child and one for the parent). Set a timer for one minute. Mark through any words read incorrectly or skipped. Place a bracket around the last word read within the one minute time frame.

The following links can be printed for practice at home. Print 2 copies of each passage. Time your child for one minute. There should be a number at the end of each line that indicated how many total words are in the story. Determine how many words your child is able to read in one minute by subtracting any words that are read incorrectly or omitted. This will give you the fluency rate (words per minute) of your child.