Fluency can be a very fun but also challenging skill to teach. Quite often it gets overlooked in classrooms. But I’ve found an ENGAGING strategy for fluency practice that has made a tremendous impact on my students’ ability to read fluently: Fluency Superheroes!
If you’re unfamiliar with fluency or additional strategies for teaching it, you may first want to check out my 4 part series on it.
- Part 1 explains what reading fluency is and the components of it.
- Part 2 addresses the biggest mistakes teachers tend to make in regard to fluency.
- Part 3 provides actionable strategies to explicitly teach fluency.
- Part 4 suggests tools students can use to practice fluent reading.
Meet Our Superheroes!
These superhero characters represent the components of fluency instruction: prosody, rate/phrasing, accuracy, and comprehension. They serve as visual reminders to encourage students to read fluently. This is similar to teachers using the Beanie Babies Reading Strategies to help students with decoding.
Prosody Characters
Expression Girl helps students read with expression based on how the character is feeling. Robot Reader wants students to read without expression in a very monotone manner like a robot.
Rate & Phrasing Characters
Super Scooper focuses on reading in meaningful phrases, while Choppy Chomper reads word by word or with awkward phrasing.
Accuracy & Comprehension Characters
Meaning Man reminds students to read accurately and think about the text. Captain Spacey, on the other hand, wants us to read without thinking about the words or what they mean.
Fluency Battles
Fluency Battles are a fun way to introduce the fluency superheroes and villains and provide engaging fluency practice. Introduce the superheroes to students prior to beginning the battles. Explain to students how the superheroes help us read fluently.
You’ll begin each battle by modeling fluent reading using a short passage. (It can be any fluency passage you have or short excerpt from a book). Slowly introduce the superheroes one at a time so students get to truly understand the fluency skill. Students should be provided with opportunities to practice each fluency skill prior to introducing the next superhero. The battles should take place over several days or weeks rather than all at once.
Battle #1 Expression Girl vs. Robot Reader
During the first battle, model reading the passage without any inflection in your voice (Robot Reader). Then model reading with expression like the character would talk (Expression Girl). Lead a discussion with students about which way sounds better and why in order to determine who won that battle.
Battle #2 Super Scooper vs. Choppy Chomper
Model reading in meaningful phrases (Super Scooper) and then word by word or using short, choppy phrases (Choppy Chomper). You may want to put the passage in a sheet protector and use a dry erase marker to draw slashes to show the phrases read. Demonstrate scooping the words together into different phrases to impact how fluently the text can be read. Once again discuss with students to determine the winner of the battle.
Battle #3 Meaning Man vs. Captain Spacey
This battle can be modeled using a think aloud. As Meaning Man, make comments during and after reading to indicate that you are actively thinking about and understanding what you’re reading. As Captain Spacey, substitute words that don’t make sense and comment after reading that you can’t remember anything that you read.
Partner Practice
After modeling these battles with students, provide opportunities for fluency practice with partners. Provide partners with the Superhero Battle cards. Only provide the superhero and villain that is your focus for the day.
One buddy reads a short passage while practicing that hero’s strategy for fluent reading. The second buddy listens and decides if the student was successful in sounding like a superhero or if a bad guy won the battle.
Model using supportive language and encouraging students to try again when they aren’t successful at reading fluently. You may want to provide sheet protectors and dry erase markers, so they can make slashes to indicate words to group together to practice reading in meaningful phrases.
Fry Fluency Phrases
Fluency phrases are a great tool to increase automaticity and provide fluency practice. The Fry Instant Phrases include the first 300 words in Dr. Edward Fry’s list of high-frequency words. According to Fry, these 300 words account for nearly 67% of the words students will encounter while reading. These short phrases are a great way for students to practice phrased reading and develop the ability to group words into meaningful phrases to improve reading fluency.
Download the Fry fluency phrases or make your own flashcards. I make a complete set of flashcards to use during guided reading. You may also want to make multiple sets so more than one student can practice at a time. Laminating the flashcards will help with durability. It is highly recommended that you hole punch and use book rings to keep the sets organized.
Students can improve their automaticity by practicing with the phrases flashcards. At the beginning of my guided reading groups, we do a quick warm up where students practice reading the phrases. If they read it word by word, I model how to read the phrase fluently and ask them to repeat after me.
The phrases flashcards can be used as a progress monitoring tool. You can opt to track students’ progress through the phrases either weekly or monthly. You will want to have a chart to record data on students’ progress with these phrases.
Fluency Data Graphs
One minute reads are a very commonly used fluency assessment to determine students’ number of words read correctly per minute or WCPM. To administer a one minute read, have each student read any passage or short text for 1 minute. You can find fluency passages online or through various programs that your school may already have accounts for you to access such as: Reading A-Z, AIMSweb, DIBELS, and McGraw-Hill Treasures.
After students have completed the one minute read, count only the number of words read correctly during that time. Look on a norms chart, such as Hasbrouck & Tindal’s, to find where the student’s WCPM number falls on the chart. Look in the Fall, Winter, or Spring column depending on the time of year and the row with your grade level. This will provide students’ fluency percentile ranking compared to their same-aged peers.
You can use a norms chart to determine an appropriate number of words you expect students to improve by each week. The norms chart includes a column indicating the average weekly improvement rate. Once you find where the students’ WCPM score places them on the chart, it will indicate the average number of words per minute they are expected to improve by each week. This helps determine if they are making growth at the expected rate.
Record students’ growth with their fluency rates on a data graph. You may choose to have them complete a one minute read on a weekly or monthly basis to monitor their progress.
Why Superheroes?
Implementing the fluency superheroes has completely transformed the way I teach fluency. It has helped me become more aware of how crucial these skills are to explicitly teach to students. Plus it’s just fun!
Not only do I enjoy using the superheroes, but the students also LOVE them! The visual reminders of the strategies help students find success and motivate them to read. Students see the superheroes hanging in my room and constantly ask about them even before I formally introduce the strategies.
But the best part is my students are now able to explain what good readers do in regard to reading fluency. Once they’re able to explain the skills, students begin to internalize and independently implement then. Students will proudly announce to me “I just read that like Expression Girl!” Who knew teaching fluency could be so much fun?
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