fluency and self-sustained reading TEKS talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--fluency. The student reads grade-level text with fluency and comprehension.

Instruct a group of students who read at the same level to read a text aloud. Ask questions to assess comprehension. Have students ask questions of one another about the text and monitor the dialogue to assess students’ comprehension of what they have read.
 

Further Explanation

For this assessment, students should be able to demonstrate fluency while reading aloud. Students should read the text with appropriate speed, accuracy, and prosody (phrasing and proper expression). The speed with which students read should make the text easily understood by themselves and the listeners. The decoding of words should be accurate enough to not impede comprehension. Prosody is important to properly convey the tone and message of the text. Students should not sound robotic. Fluency should be practiced with a variety of text types at students’ reading level. 

Students should understand how and when to purposely adjust the elements of fluency depending on what information they need to draw from the text. For example, if students are scanning a page for a specific name, they can read with a faster rate and less emphasis on decoding complex words than if they are reading about a new topic and must ensure they are connecting unfamiliar words with concepts to enhance comprehension.
Students must have the skills necessary to move through a text at a pace that matches the speed at which they can mentally process information. Students should be able to connect words and the ideas those words represent without significant interruption when they encounter new or complex information.
Students must have frequent and recurrent opportunities to read a wide variety of texts that are challenging but not overwhelming. The structure and content of the text should reflect the concepts students are expected to understand at their grade level. For example, seventh-grade students should be challenged but not overwhelmed when reading texts that include complex sentences or references to the Texas Revolution because both appear in the curriculum for the grade level. However, texts with sentences that frequently incorporate parenthetical references for elaboration or that include highly academic discussions of advanced concepts related to the Texas Revolution would likely not be appropriate for most seventh graders.

Research

Kim, Y. -S. (2015). Developmental, component-based model of reading fluency: An investigation of predictors of word-reading fluency, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 50(4), 459–481. doi:10.1002/rrq.107

Summary: The primary goal of this study is to explain the difference between text reading fluency, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The study explores the relationship between each construct. Other concepts involved in the study included listening comprehension, emergent literacy predictors, and language and cognitive predictors. The study investigated the relationship and differences over time (longitudinal scale). The results of the study reveal how each construct interrelates to the development of text reading fluency, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension.