Fluency Fridays

Fluency Card Bank from Lakeshore Learning

I began Fluency Fridays 8 years ago with the DRA {Developmental Reading Assessment} starting putting emphasis on Words Per Minute and students couldn't progress on to the next reading level if they didn't meet the fluency rate requirement.

Every Friday I would check all of my second graders fluency. Flash forward... I teach third grade now and not every child needs fluency rate practice. Every Fall when I complete DRA assessments I make a list of students who failed a level because of WPM as well as a list of students whose WPM is borderline. Usually that's around 8-12 students. On Fridays I check those student's fluency only.

I was finally able to capture some pictures of how I set up my fluency checks while teaching summer school. I use the fluency record that comes with the kit to track their progress and I used a program called Graph Club years ago and created this graph {sorry I don't have an electronic copy}. Students read the colored copy from the kit while I follow along in my binder. I also use the minute timers the kit came with to measure how many words they can read per minute.

I use a 1 inch binder for my Fluency Checks

I copied one Fiction and Nonfiction Passage from each level and put them in sheet protectors in the binder.

I started this student at a level E, as you can see it took two tries to pass that level and then she went onto level F. During the year, I would give her the Nonfiction E but for sake of time this summer I just went onto the next level.

As you can see this student's fluency was inconsistent this summer.

This student was only able to stay on level G this summer but you can see that his fluency doubled from the beginning of summer school until the end.

This student was able to progress through 3 levels this summer. I also remind them that their fluency drops when the begin a higher level but then usually by the second reading they bounce back.

 

Every year I've seen students who've struggled with fluency increase their WPM and most importantly their confidence by do this every Friday. What do you do to increase fluency in your classroom?