Resources for Fluency Instruction

Even though Keys to Literacy professional development programs focus on comprehension, vocabulary, and writing, we are often asked about resources related to fluency – what it is, why it’s important, and how to teach it. This blog entry is devoted to identifying fluency resources.

I decided to start with the work of Jan Hasbrouck, a friend and colleague who I believe knows more about fluency than any other educator in the country. Together with her colleague, Gerald Tindal, Jan developed the first set of national norms for oral reading fluency performance in 1992. They updated and presented the norms in 2006 in an article: Oral Reading Fluency Norms: A Valuable Assessment Tool for Reading Teachers.

You can hear Jan talk about cultivating strong readers and activities to build fluency in an archived webinar available at the Voyager-Sopris website.

Here are several other resources written by Jan:

• Developing Fluent Readers 
• Screening, Diagnosing, and Progress Monitoring for Fluency: The Details
• An interesting piece about silent reading not a helpful way to develop fluency
• Fluency PowerPoint

If you would like to contact Jan, visit her website.  You can purchase the training manual authored by Jan and Deb Glaser “Reading Fluency, Understanding and Teaching this Complex Skill” .

In addition to Jan’s work, here are a few other fluency resources:

• A half-hour program about fluent reading produced by WETA
• Fluency: An Introduction
• Fluency: The Bridge From Decoding to Reading Comprehension
• Reading Fluency Assessment and Instruction: What, Why, and How?