Reading Strategies

Reading Fluency Strategies

Definition:The ability to read easily and well.  Fluency has three dimensions:

• Accuracy in word decoding: reader must be able to sound out words (using phonics and other word decoding strategies) in text with few errors.
• Automatic processing: This is when the reader uses as little mental effort as possible in the decoding of text, saving mental energy for comprehension.
•  Prosody or Prosodic reading: Prosody is a linguistic concept that refers to such features in oral language as intonation, pitch, stress, pauses, and the duration placed on specific syllables.

Common Core State Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

Strategies to build fluency (taken and adapted from Reading and Learning to Read [2012]):

• Repeated Readings: “Oral repeated readings provide additional sensory reinforcement for the reader, allowing him or her to focus on the prosodic elements of reading that are essential to phrasing.  Oral readings also ensure that the student is actually reading, not skimming or scanning the text” (Rasinski, 2003).

• Automated Reading: Listening while reading a text (simultaneous listening and reading [SLR]).  Procedure as follows:
• Student listen individually to recorded stories, simultaneously following along with the written text.  They read and listen repeatedly to the same story until they can read the story fluently.
• When students first begin this method, it may take as long as a month before they are able to read a fairly long story aloud fluently.  As they become more proficient with SLR, the time can be reduced by as much as half (Chomsky [1976]).
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Tips for parents:

• Exposure to Texts: Expose students to as much reading as possible, whether it be their independent reading, or Parent-Child reading time. 
• Reread familiar texts.  Read reading favorite books helps children become fluent. 
• Echo-Read:  Echo reading is a rereading strategy designed to help students develop expressive, fluent reading.  The parent reads a short segment of text (sentence or phrase), and the student echoes back the same sentence or phrase while following along in the text. 
• Use predictable books: To build fluency, parents should read books with children that have predictable, rhythmic patterns so the child can “hear” the sound of fluent reading as he or she reads the book aloud.

Reading Comprehension Strategies

Definition: “Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text/message. This understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written and how they trigger knowledge outside the text/message.”

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.2.10 By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Strategies to build Comprehension: These strategies are meant to eventually be internalized by the student and used independently of adult prompting.  In the beginning, adult guidance and support are important to helping students feel successful in their endeavors:

• Asking Questions:  This common strategy is to have children answer questions about what is read.  Questions have traditionally been organized into three categories:
1. Literal Questions: Students answer by using information explicitly stated in the text.
2. Inferential Questions: Students answer by using their background knowledge along with information from the text.
3. Evaluative Questions: Students answer by making judgments about what they read.
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• Reciprocal Questioning (ReQuest): ReQuest encourages students to ask their own questions about the material being read.  Some Question Prompts for ReQuest are:
• What does __________ remind you of?
• Do you know someone like the character _________?
• Do you agree with what _________ did in the story?
• What do you think will happen next in the story?
• Why do you think the author chose ___________ as the setting?
• Can you think of a different way to describe the action in this part of the story?
• What do you picture in your mind when you read this part of the story?

Phonics and Word Recognition

Definition: Word Identification is a comprehensive term that encompasses the use of multiple cues to identify unfamiliar words.  There are two different subsets of word identification: Immediate identification and mediated identification (which both in turn have different strategies fall under their definition).

a) Immediate Identification is when one immediately recognizes words that are retrieved rapidly from lexical memory (or rapid recognition).

• Site-word recognition.
• Word recognition.
• Context.

b) Mediated Identification is when readers must devote conscious attention to “unlocking” the alphabetic code (this is also commonly referred to as phonics):

• Word attack.
• Word analysis.
• Decoding.

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RF.2.3 Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.


Strategies adapted from:

      Vacca, J. A. L., R. T. Vacca, M. K. Gove, L. C. Burkey, L. A. Lenhart, and C. A. McKeon. Reading and learning to read. 8th. 8th. Boston, MA: Allyn , 2012. Print.