Developing Reading Fluency
April 27, 2019
There is nothing like the feeling of relief and success you feel when your child begins to actually read! Suddenly, each and every word isn’t a struggle, sentences start to sound like connected words, and most importantly your child feels success at being able to read a sentence or two at a time. This is the point at which many parents and teachers begin to relax, and believe that they’ve past the tipping point and reading will just start to get faster and smoother naturally. For many children, this is the case. For many with dyslexia, unfortunately this is not the case.
One of the key differences between a dyslexic and a non-dyslexic brain is that a non-dyslexic person will naturally move from sounding out each word to whole word recognition with relatively few repetitions of the words. A dyslexic person does not make this transition without specific training. It may be because the dyslexic brain needs many more repetitions before new neural networks are formed (Remembering New Words . . . Or Not!). It may be because the dyslexic brain uses different paths than non-dyslexic brains for reading functions. Whatever the reason, the end result is the same . . . if a dyslexic person is going to develop reading fluency, they must be specifically taught to transition from sounding out each letter or group of letters in a word to recognizing the word as a whole. This is the only way to move from slow reading to fluent reading. As I said before, this is a transition that occurs naturally in a non-dyslexic person that allows them to become fluent readers.
So, how do you do this? Start by making flashcards of words that the student can sound out fairly easily (in 1 – 3 seconds). Take 5 to 10 of these cards (depending on their age) and start working on speed drills with them. At first they will be slow (1 – 3 seconds), but with consistent repetition they will begin to speed up their recognition of the word. Make sure you shuffle the cards every single time. Some people with dyslexia have fantastic memories and will remember the order of the cards before they remember to read what the card says! Don’t give them any patterns to fall back on. Keep it fun, light, and short! Run through the cards once or twice (shuffling the cards in between) several times a day. It shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. I always found that just before or just after mealtimes or snacktime was a good opportunity to do them when we wouldn’t forget. Once a word is recognized instantly several days in a row, put it into a second stack for periodic review and add a new word to the current stack. You want to make sure the student has reached the level of instant recognition of the word. Run through the stack of learned words once a day. The word card can then be retired when instant recognition is reached every time for a couple of weeks. In standardized testing, an average student in grade 3 can read 112 words per minute. That is just under two words per second. This gives you an idea of how quick that word recognition needs to be in order to develop fluent reading.
This process takes time, as does everything with dyslexia, but it works. A vocabulary of 3000 words will allow a person to read about 95% of common texts. If you can help your student master this many words (and it can be done), they will significantly improve their reading fluency and only be slowed down by unfamiliar words. In turn, reading won’t be as tiring and won’t take nearly as long as it will if they never transition to whole word recognition.
Related Posts:
Phonics? Whole Word? Both? What’s Best?
Reading Fluency: Reading Together