Effective Strategies for Improving Reading Fluency among Elementary Students

Automatic word recognition is the key to unlocking meaning from a particular read text. When readers have high automaticity of decoding a text, they will spend little time to decipher individual words and comprehend the passage quickly (Hausheer, Hansen, & Doumas, 2011).  Many educators have applied themselves to achieve reading fluency in elementary pupils, which is a profound requirement for their future excellence in reading and comprehension. Learners face challenges in having to read complex texts with the embedded standards of learning. Fluency helps pupils to avoid depleting their cognitive space because the nuances and interconnections between words takes little effort. The demand for more accurate fluent readers is universal, and instructors must deliver their best (White & Robertson, 2015). This paper shall discuss a framework teachers use to enhance reading fluency with the help of technological advances.

Problem Statement

With the abundant use of technology in classrooms to help students in their literacy lessons, most instructors are not comfortable in using all the forms of technology technologically for the benefit of their students. Traditionally, teachers used to teach about technology, but currently, they need to use it to educate learners (White & Robertson, 2015). This paper intends to shed light on some of the best practices some teachers have adopted to teach literacy and fluency.

Research Purpose

This study purposes of identifying the best practices used to teach fluency in reading for the elementary students. The knowledge framework for pedagogy, technology, and the content will be discussed as the best ways to integrate technology in classroom settings.

Research Questions

The paper aims to answer the following questions: what does fluency instruction entail? How can instructors improve the performance of struggling students in fluency? What technologies are available to enhance fluency instruction in learning institutions? How are schools handling students with performance rates below their grade levels? Are parents proficient with information on technology for their children they should use for their learning in school and at home? (Rasinski et al., 2010)

Significance of the Study

The outcome of the study will help teachers to be more effective in delivering fluency instruction to their learners. The research will help to mitigate the existent attitude towards technology and prepare more teachers to accept the learning tools. The pedagogical, technological, and content outline will help both teachers and parents in participating actively towards improving fluency for students.

Personal Connection

My determination to study on reading fluency and appropriate technology for its instruction rose out of concern on the unutilized potential of some students. One of the wealthiest British nationals, Richard Branson, has a learning disability called dyslexia. In his childhood, the teachers wrote him off because he could not read fluently, and he consequently started performing drably in his studies. Many students with genius minds can be helped by using appropriate teaching methods and learning technology.

Literature Review

Reading fluency is a universal necessity for all elementary learners for their future success in literacy (Parenti & Chen, 2015). There are five basic blocks or components instructors can use to teach literacy effectively, which shall be discussed in this section, which deal with phonetics and vocabulary. The review also delves into the specific challenges of reading children’s experiences. The difficulties take different patterns depending on the degree of a disability or the used intervention method. Lastly, this section will cover some of the strategies instructors have used in the past to help students maneuver in their literacy exercises.

Blocks for Effective Elementary Literacy Program

According to the National Reading Council of the US, five components constitute effective instruction for elementary children (Rasinski, 2017). The panel had researched in response to the call from the US Congress to determine ways teaching can be enhanced in the year 2000. The outcome has remained an informant rubric to educational policy developers and technology enthusiasts for learning in schools. The five factors are discussed below.

Instruction on Phonetic Awareness

The first stage of learning for children is identifying the segments of each word in speech, called phonemes, and how they blend to create words. Every learner must master the speech sounds of word phonemes as a foundational step of phonics teaching (Stevens, Walker, & Vaughn, 2017).

Phonics Instruction

The approach of phonics instruction acquaints pupils with sounds and letters. They start recognizing different words and how to pronounce them by decoding the written form into the spoken text.

Fluency Instruction

The phase involves guiding learners to read words in passages with the appropriate speed, basic poses, intonation, accuracy, and expression. The fluency of a student is an indication of the degree of comprehending a passage. At first, children will read one word at a time, but when they get used, their reading speed improves at one making an actual speech. It is for this reason that children are considered to understand the passage they are reading because of the ability to interpret the written letters to sounds (Haager & Vaughn, 2013).

Instruction of Vocabulary

Children start exploring the meaning of other words and starting learning that names can be used differently for diverse contexts. Teachers achieve vocabulary instruction through several tools like the creation of word walls, word games, introducing new concepts daily, and using the latest words in sentences ((Parenti & Chen, 2015).

Teaching Text Comprehension

After children have mastered reading words correctly, the teachers may have to test them to know if they understand what they are reading. One way of doing this is to ask questions to the children about the text and making a summary of the reading. The five components are connected, one step leading to another. The fluent reading, which points to the ability to comprehend a passage, starts with phonetic awareness teaching, phonics, and be augmented with vocabularies (Lysenko & Abrami, 2014).

Difficulties with Reading Fluency

At the early stages of learning, it is natural for children to learn phonemes slowly in a sequential manner. Their psychomotor and cognitive skills are developing. However, for some students, the continual application of what they lean seems to stagnate. Research shows that approximately 20% of all elementary children have problems with reading. Another study indicates that close to 40% of all fourth-graders possess reading skills, which are below their level (Bolos, 2012). Children vary in their ability to decode words to phonemes and read passages with fluency. Whereas some need exposure to a name only once, some need as many as twenty to grasp a new word fully. On average, children need a frequency of exposure to new terms between four to fourteen times to master a

concept.

Children must read a wide range of words comfortably fluently and independently with up to accuracy levels of 95%. Spelling instruction is an antecedent to fluent reading, and elementary learners will interact with several examples of how letters form words using the individual letter sounds. A combination of letters cerates syllables and more accomplishment comes by reading more significant parts of a word using different notes. Learners may either have specific-word or specific-comprehension difficulties. For instance, pupils with dyslexia have problems with fluency in reading and comprehending texts, but it is not an indication of low intelligence (Haager & Vaughn, 2013).

Reading difficulties start developing when instruction begins and worsens with time. Unfortunately, most schools fail to detect early enough that children have fluency and comprehension challenges until a child reaches grade two or three. The structure of the curriculum focuses on reading skills on phonemics and not fluency. When the problem continues, in high school, fluency will not improve. Research shows that comprehension irrefutably increases, and male students face fluency and comprehension problems in their reading than girls.

Teachers have faced the problem of fluency with many strategies to increase the proficiency of reading skills. They were reading while listening is one of the tools available couple with assisted reading. Instructors may also employ the tactic of paired reading. The instructional strategy is crucial in building interest in learning like demystifying tasks by dividing them and collecting feedback from learners regularly.

Patterns of Reading Fluency Difficulties

According to Rasinski (2012), reading difficulties are common in students with learning disabilities. The first pattern involves students who can barely read words accurately and slowly. It becomes laborious for them to read a simple passage. The second pattern is for those who can decode words correctly after intervening in their reading challenges. Still, they are performing dismally in comparison to their peers or their grading level. Increased instruction of phonics and phonetic awareness does little to improve their ability. There are three setbacks reading difficulties create in learners; the first one is losing comprehension of a text by concentrating on individual words. Secondly, a menacing and challenging reading experience demotivates readers. The lack of motivation translates into many other academic issues by compounding problems in the learning process. Lastly, when the elementary students proceed to upper levels, the reading capacity to handle a massive volume of material reduces, and they are likely to perform grimly in class (Sanden, 2014).

Several factors could explain the underlying challenges in reading. The first one is the aggregate limited exposure to words in print. For instance, a child may be exposed to a lot of independent reading in school and at home. At the elementary levels, students cannot make meaningful progress by themselves; thus, they need a competent instructor to guide them through. A failure to remediate the learning difficulties earlier compounds to severe challenges. Another school of thought explains that reading fluency is becoming a challenge when children cannot coordinate everyday items with letters and numbers. Decoding in such cases is very difficult for the child. The last perception of the difficulty arises from phonological deficits; the leading problems for students with learning and reading disabilities (Sandberg & Reschly, 2011).

Solutions for Fluency Problems

One the problem of fluency has developed, it will be difficult to find remedies (Uerz, Volman, & Kral, 2018). Therefore, instructors should be keen to notice any signs of reading difficulties when the children are still very young in their junior grades. There are several ways to give the affected students personalized attention to their reading difficulties. The instructor may organize to extend the amount of time for guidance, break down the reading tasks to smaller sections, and engage pupils with indirect questioning. Creating a small and highly interactive group to teach will be very efficient. A highly effective method of ensuring students have gained fluency in unfamiliar words is supplementary reading plans. Assisted learning, reading in pairs, and reading while listening tactics listed early apply to remedial reading programs (Lo et al., 2011). For improvement in comprehension ability, the instructor can lead students in reading a passage three to four-time. Research has demonstrated that learning more than four times hardly increases comprehension.

Summary

Instruction on phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and fluency adds up to aggregate reading comprehension for all students. Teachers must appreciate that reading difficulty are universal and take different patterns in left unaddressed. The many challenges students face are solvable using tactics like remedial reading, word games, assisted reading, and reading in pairs.

Methods

This qualitative research study and shall use interviews with teachers from different schools to find out the technologies they use for teaching fluency (Tindall & Nisbet, 2010).

Site Information and Participants

The setting for this study involves six public elementary schools in the state of Utah that have a provision for students with learning disabilities. The research took place in resource rooms where teachers implement different strategies for reading to make the learning process comfortable and convenient. The teachers had a minimum experience of four years in handling elementary students and have more than two years of contact in instructing third graders.

I started by identifying the public elementary schools to be used for the study in the state of Utah. Qualitative studies involve few participants with a knowledge of the area in education. I used purposeful sampling to obtain information-rich cases associated with fluency reading. The gatekeeper technique was useful in identifying participants who meet the criteria for the research. The gatekeepers for the analysis are school principals who know their stuff, and they could advise accordingly where and who to engage in the study.

With each school providing two participants, the total population, N=12 participants. All participants were to be proficient in teaching up to grade three students because this is the stage where students acquire their literacy foundation and reading fluency. Also, the participants must have interacted with computer technologies for learning, which they are to share during the interviews. The sampling criteria reduced the total number of expected partakers to n=7.

Instruments

Almutairi (2018) surveyed public elementary schools in the Southwest region of Michigan. He wanted to identify effective strategies for teaching students with learning disabilities. He sought permission from the principals and asked them to share with potential participants who meet the criteria for the study. The partakers were met in person and prepared for the research with a brief on their rights to privacy, and the investigation was useful for this study.

The school principals will hopefully grant the needed permissions to survey with the teachers. In preparation, I will share a flyer with the principals to give to the teachers about the content of the interview. Using emails and phone calls, I will schedule in-person meetings with all teachers and informed them about the purpose of the study and methods of data collection. I shall ask teachers to share their preferred meeting time for a face-to-face interview, which could last for 30 minutes. The written survey questions could take roughly 15 minutes to complete. As a necessity to precisely analyze the collected data, I will request teachers to share with me student’s data like aggregate scores without revealing actual identities. Finally, I will also need the instructors to inform the research of various artifacts and instructional equipment or technology they use in teaching students on literacy (Street, 2013).

For the research survey, questions on what does fluency instruction entail, helping struggling students, and how instructors can improve the performance of struggling students in fluency will be removed because they need a lot of in-depth exposition only possible through an interview. Questions on available technologies and if parents are involved in their children’s learning took prominence

In the study Almutairi (2018) conducted on the literacy of third graders, he used a snowball strategy for interviews. The method allows the researcher to identify other participants who will be useful for the study. Participating teachers know many others who meet the criteria to take part. The secondary partakers or referrals will also go through the briefing process to prepare them and seek their consent on specific areas. In personal interviews, teachers will share their understanding of fluency instruction, the technology they use, and methods of handling learning disabilities.

Procedures for Data Collection

School principals are responsible for permitting this research study. The research only needs approvals from the individual schools’ heads. The heads of schools will reach out to the relevant teachers and share my interest in conducting research. Individual potential participants will then contact me directly, or I organize a meeting with a second meeting to follow up. In the subsequent encounter, I will hold a meeting with the partakers of the study and prepare them. At this point, I will share a consent form to the members, which is to be signed before the research takes place (Goodman, 2019).

Data will be collected using two methods—surveys and interviews. Reviews are for less elaborate questions, which will take fifteen minutes to answer. Several questions will be presented on the fluency instruction, technologies available, and ways of improving fluency problems. Interviews will be conducts in-person, with audio-recorders which will be transcribed later. Results of survey questions and transcriptions will provide the needed data for analysis (Haager & Vaughn, 2013).

Procedure for Data Analysis

I shall use an inductive analysis strategy to gain some meaning from the data. The second step shall be transcribing all the interviews in verbatim to be acquainted with the collected data. The relevant software for qualitative data analysis like Nvivo will be used. Before coding the transcriptions, all data must be backed up in different stores. The third stage is sorting overlapping information in different coded themes. Lastly, the category system will be revised to check for any errors (Abernathy-Dyer, Ortlieb, & Cheek, 2013).

Role of the Researcher

My duty in the research was to inform the participants of their rights and the scope of the study. They were at liberty to terminate the interview, hold the information they considered private or confess their ignorance for questions they could not handle. All permissions for various places were sought in time to meet the participants and prepare them.

Data Triangulation

Triangulation is the use of many sources of qualitative data to make useful conclusions about the subject matter. In this research, triangulation will use the themes presented in the interviews and survey and review their consistency regarding teaching children on fluency. An account of how efficient teaching should be in one respondent of an interview will be credible if others reiterate it (Liu, 2016).

Ethical Considerations

Consent was sought for all participants, starting from the principal who allowed me to access them. The teachers were at liberty to share or not to share particular details of the study. I avoided personal questions, which would lead to embarrassment or discomfort. Finally, I ensured confidentiality was maintained by requesting the teachers to share the performance scores of their pupils without revealing their names (Sandberg & Reschly, 2011).

Limitations of the Study

The first limitation for this research is the small sample size, whose findings cannot be accurately scaled up for a huge population. Statistical power lies in the use of a broad base of participants (Duke, & Block, 2012). The second limitation is the absence of a control group for demonstrating that various technologies can improve the performance of students against students who do not use them.

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