Special Education Resources: Article Detail

Ways to Improve Reading Fluency
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., Educational Therapist, Learning Disabilities Specialist
Director of Bonnie Terry Learning, Auburn, CA (530) 888-7160
www.bonnieterrylearning.com

Studies have shown that short sessions are better than long session on fluency training. From my 30 years of teaching, the easiest way I have found to improve reading fluency is to spend 5 minutes at least twice a week working on word fluency. I wrote 5 Minutes to Better Reading Skills so that it would incorporate four components that need to be addressed in reading fluency.

The book addresses the phonological - it incorporates every vowel and consonant combination in the English language, with lots of review built in. It addresses the perceptual - both visual closure and visual tracking; it addresses automaticity by having students continually needing to read more words per minute; and finally it has a built in record keeping device so that children and parents can see their improvement daily.