by Jerry Johns
Fluency is no longer a neglected component of a quality reading program. The report of the National Reading Panel identified fluency as one of the five foundational areas of instruction (the others are phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension).
Along with fluency instruction has come progress monitoring. This frequently involves one-minute timed readings. Such monitoring typically involves asking a student to read aloud a short, grade-level passage for one minute while the examiner marks the student’s miscues during that time.
The student’s accuracy and speed or rate in words correct per minute (WCPM) are the two variables commonly used to evaluate progress. Published or locally developed oral reading norms are generally used as targets or benchmarks to be achieved. Monitoring takes place several times a year for “average” students and every couple of weeks for students who struggle in reading. For readers who struggle, monitoring could occur 20 times a year. In some Response to Intervention (RTI) situations, monitoring has taken place weekly.
Regular progress monitoring enables teachers and specialists to gauge progress or the lack of it and provide or make referrals for appropriate interventions. Targeted instruction and the intervention of specialists, when appropriate, has undoubtedly helped many students become faster and more accurate in their decoding, which can contribute to increased fluency and improved comprehension.
It is also possible that such progress monitoring has resulted in some unintended consequences. First, because students are asked to read grade-level passages, some students will find the passages very difficult and frustrating. These students typically include struggling readers, learning disabled students (a large percentage of whom have trouble with reading), and lower-functioning students in special education.
Frequent progress monitoring means that these students are asked to perform a task over and over that is simply too difficult for them. Teachers can also become frustrated when they are required to have students read passages that are too difficult. The result is known before the monitoring begins: The student will perform very poorly. The worthwhile desire of teachers to promote successful experiences can be thwarted by recurring progress monitoring. Student engagement, attitude, and morale may become negative toward reading and influence the learning environment as a whole.
A second unintended consequence may be that some students will conclude that important reading takes place in one-minute bursts. It was reported that some third graders about to be monitored asked, “Are you timing me? Do I only have one minute?”
Under these circumstances, it is quite possible that students monitored frequently will acquire the perception that good reading is a matter of speed and accuracy. There is no doubt that these two skills are critical if students are to become efficient and effective readers. A more comprehensive concept of fluency, however, involves prosody (expression) and comprehension. What may exist for too many students is “fluency lite” monitoring because of the primary emphasis on speed and accuracy to the exclusion of comprehension and expression.
In my professional judgment, the core and essential elements of quality fluency instruction include comprehension, accuracy, speed, and expression. There are additional foundational skills, but it is my hope that teachers and specialists will thoughtfully re-examine both instruction in and monitoring of fluency. We may be unintentionally frustrating students and teaching them that fast and accurate decoding is the essence of reading. Progress monitoring should reflect a more comprehensive model of fluency in which comprehension and expression join speed and accuracy to develop fluent reading.
Jerry Johns is distinguished teaching professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University and a past president of IRA.
Monitoring progress in fluency: Possible unintended consequences. (June 2007). Reading Today, 24(6), 18.
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