Strengthen Fluency skills with Reading Fluency Booster Activities
Fluency is an essential skill for students and is the critical link between decoding and comprehension. When readers struggle with fluency, they often have a difficult time with comprehension. It’s important that we create opportunities for fluency skill practice throughout the year.
If a reader is using all of their mental energy on decoding and accuracy, then little energy is left for comprehending the text. As, teachers, we need to help boost fluency. The more practice a student gets, then the more accuracy and automaticity will occur. Playing games and implementing fluency-building activities each week will help students shift from “learning to read” to reading to learn” which is our ultimate goal as educators.
According to Tim Rasinki “the development of reading fluency is an important goal of reading instruction”. Rasinksi states that repeated readings are a valuable way to boost fluency. The activities that are included in my fluency boosters are great for promoting confident readers.
Introducing Fluency Boosters
Incorporate fluency into your weekly routine using Fluency Boosters. The boosters are the perfect follow-up activity to Fluency Boot Camp and allow you to sprinkle in fluency review for the class or to use for additional practice during intervention groups.
Fluency Boosters are beginner-level activities that are organized by fluency component and inspired by the “Fast Finisher Fluency Extras” from my Daily Fluency Activity Pages (all compiled together into one resource with a practice page for each of the fun activities).
Students will work on activities that are Common Core aligned and reinforce oral reading fluency skills. The activities allow students to practice the essential components needed to build fluency (i.e., Pace, Phrasing, Expression, Punctuation, and Accuracy). There is one booster per reading component, but you can purchase the booster bundle that includes all five resources, or in my Beginner-Level Fluency Toolkit.
How to Use Booster Activities for Fluency Practice
It is important to teach each component of fluency before having your students complete these booster activities! Even the youngest learners can understand what these components are! Create silly acronyms or a funny pneumonic to help them remember the letters; P, P, E, P, A. Display posters in your classroom with picture clues and labels. Be sure to send home a reference sheet so your parents also understand how to help at home.
- Pace: how fast or slow you are reading.
- Phrasing: chunking words together in meaningful phrases
- Expression: reading with feeling in your voice
- Punctuation: paying attention to punctuation
- Accuracy: reading the word correctly
Once you have taught your students what the parts of fluency are you can implement the activities. Kids can complete these practice activity pages for morning work, literacy centers, or as take-home practice. Add this resource to your literacy toolbox for students who need more targeted practice with fluency each year, or save it for your “sub binder” for when you need a few extra activities to reinforce skills while you’re out for PD! The beauty of the resource is that it can be completed independently, in partners, or as a whole group. Make it work for your classroom!
Additional Activities to Boost Fluency
- Fluency Boot Camp
- Daily Fluency Activity Pages (Multi-Level)
- Daily Fluency Task Cards (Multi-Level)
Want to learn more about boosting fluency? Read about 5 Easy and Successful Ways to Improve Reading Fluency in Your Classroom and explore some of my other fluency blog posts for additional ideas for boosting your students’ fluency skills.
