Prosody is an important indicator of reading development, but many teachers are unclear about how it can help students improve their reading fluency. Beyond demonstrating expressive or flowing reading, specific components of "reading prosody" can distinctly reveal how well word recognition and comprehension processes coalesce, providing…

Canines can provide emotional support, create a nonjudgmental environment, facilitate positive social interactions, and shape student behavior. This study investigated the impact of a canine-assisted reading program on four second-grade students' reading fluency and attitudes toward reading. Oral reading fluency (ORF) was measured using ORF…

Responding to recent challenges to Clay's Running Records (2019) and their analysis using a three-cueing system, the author examines this reading assessment from an additive perspective of both bottom-up and top-down orientations of reading instruction. Endorsing their inclusion among classroom reading assessments, the author navigates the tension…

More and more students with learning disabilities and other diverse learners are placed for instruction in general education classrooms, which often leaves teachers grappling to design successful peer interactions and literacy activities to meet the needs of all learners in their classrooms. As the shift is made to align literacy instruction to…

Read Two Impress Plus (R2I+) is a fluency-building routine involving students and a more experienced reader in an echo reading process using culturally and linguistically authentic texts. R2I+ was offered as a partnership-centered, culturally and linguistically affirming family engagement to improve the literacy proficiency of students, aged 7-12,…

This article describes four key principles from Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention), an evidence-based early reading intervention and professional development program. Focused on accelerating the growth of students not yet meeting grade-level expectations, one-on-one 15-minute daily TRI lessons engage…

Decoding, building fluency, and exploring word and sentence meanings are important elements of literacy instruction in elementary classrooms. Shared literacy experiences provide opportunities for teachers to engage students in meaningful reading experiences. This article describes a quick four-step process for conducting close sentence reading, a…

According to interpretations of results from the latest oral reading fluency (ORF) study conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (White et al., 2020), fourth-grade students who score below the basic standard require interventions that focus on word recognition, phonological decoding, and fluency. Before such mandates for…

Poetry can help develop in students a love for reading, writing, and playing with language, yet it is often a neglected literary form in many reading curricula. Those who see the value of poetry recognize it as the perfect genre for teaching phonics, fluency, and a love of language. The rhyming, rhythmical language of poetry provides the perfect…

This teaching tip showcases how students use iPads to video record themselves orally reading. In the Record, Listen, Reflect process, students conduct repeated readings with a familiar text, watch the recorded video, and conduct running records on themselves. Having an opportunity to watch videos of their own reading gives students a glimpse of…

This article was inspired by the fact that teachers have been asked to increase the difficulty of texts that students encounter without clear guidance on how to support their students when reading difficult texts. First, findings are presented from a recent review that investigated the effects of increased text difficulty on elementary students'…

Teachers balance many goals when selecting texts for small-group reading. The author explored the impact of one variable that teachers consider, quantitative text difficulty, on students' participation, discussion, comprehension, and fluency in small-group discussions of informational science texts. Six bilingual third graders identified as…

The authors describe a research-based method to increase students' reading fluency. The method is called Read Two Impress, which is derived from the Neurological Impress Method and the method of repeated readings. The authors provide step-by-step procedures to effectively implement the reading fluency intervention. Previous research indicates that…

As school districts nationwide have moved toward data driven intervention, oral reading fluency measures have become a prevalent means to monitor progress by assessing the degree to which a child is becoming a fast (and therefore fluent) reader. This article reviews results of a survey of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working with children…

This article discusses how to implement paired reading with developing readers to foster students' fluency and reading comprehension. The teacher first helps students comprehend the story with focused discussion questions and the completion of a beginning, middle, and end (B-M-E) chart. Then, the teacher scaffolds students to do the oral reading…