Reading Fluency: Reading Together
February 25, 2019
One of the more difficult skills for a person with dyslexia to develop is reading fluency. Reading fluency is the ability to read quickly, accurately, with full comprehension and expression. The transition from beginning reader to fluent reader takes time for everyone, whether they have dyslexia or not. However, those without dyslexia will naturally make that transition with time and practice. Often those with dyslexia will not make that transition without specific support and encouragement.
Reading is hard work for someone with dyslexia. Remembering all the sounds, rules for pronunciation, exceptions, etc. means that each word has to be carefully decoded, and the same words are often not seen frequently enough to become familiar as a ‘word’ rather than a series of sounds. If you want to know more about why this happens, take a look at “Remembering New Words . . . Or Not!” . This also means that reading is a slow process and often the flow of the story is lost in working through the words and the sentences. Without the pull of the story, there is little incentive to read more, and it becomes a vicious cycle of not reading as much, words don’t become familiar, reading is slow and difficult, which leads to not reading as much. How do you help your child overcome this hurdle?
One of the methods I used was reading together. This was an activity we did separately from a reading lesson. During a reading lesson, my child did all of the reading. Reading together was something we added when they were reading well enough to manage simple books (Amelia Bedelia** was one favourite), but didn’t have the confidence or desire to read more. We would sit comfortably together (make it a pleasant, fun time together, not work) and take turns reading. At the beginning, they would read a sentence and then I would read a couple of sentences. With the easy readers that had 4 – 5 sentences per page, they would read the first sentence on the page and I would finish the rest of the page, and we would continue this way through the whole story (keep in mind these are very short stories). As their confidence increased, we worked our way towards taking turns every other sentence, and then every other page etc. As we moved into chapter books, we started the same way. They would read the first sentence or two in the paragraph, then I would finish the paragraph, working towards taking turns every other paragraph, then every other page reading just one chapter in a session. Usually by that time they were off to the races and reading comfortably on their own.
What does this accomplish if you are doing as much or more reading than your child? It allows them to engage in the flow of the story far more than they could if they were reading alone. The effort of reading is interspersed with enjoyment of the story. Hearing the story flow will also give more context to the sections they are reading, making it easier to see how the sentences or paragraphs fit together. One of my favourite ways to sneak them into reading more was to stop reading at a crucial point in the story because I had to do something else at the end of our reading time. Nancy Drew* ** and Hardy Boys* ** books are great for ending each chapter with a cliffhanger. My daughters would beg me to continue, but I “couldn’t”. However, they were free to read ahead and find out what happened next, if they wanted to. Quite often they would read ahead and then I would ask them to come and tell me what happened. It didn’t take too many times before they would be happily reading ahead and eventually finishing the book on their own. Don’t stop reading together too soon though! By reading progressively more challenging books together in this way, you will help them to not only progress in their reading skills more quickly but also tackle more difficult books than they would have confidence to try on their own.
* I’m referring to the original hardcover series of both Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, not to the recently rewritten and republished books which do not have the scope of vocabulary of the original books. I have other major aversions to the rewritten books, but won’t go into those here. Both of the original series are easily found at second hand bookstores.
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