What is Fluency?

I once tried boosting my middle schoolers’ fluency by timing how fast they could read with stopwatches. It backfired. Students raced through texts so quickly I couldn’t even understand what they were saying. Me and my students didn’t realize at the time that fluency wasn’t about speed! When I dug into the research, I understood just how essential fluency is and that it’s often overlooked. This blog post explores what fluency is and how we can build it the right way. 

While reading rate is one part of fluency, it's much more nuanced. Fluency researcher Jan Hasbrouck defines it as: “text read with reasonable accuracy, appropriate rate, and suitable expression or prosody that represents that you understand what you’ve read.” 

Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Accuracy means reading the words on the page correctly. To really understand a text, students need to read at least 95% of the words accurately, and for younger readers, it should be closer to 98%! Accuracy depends on strong word recognition skills.

• Rate (or pacing) is the speed at which students read. But faster isn’t always better! We want students to read at a pace that sounds natural, like a conversation. 

• Expression (also called prosody) is how students read with phrasing, emphasis, and tone. Good expression (chunking words into phrases, pausing at the right places, and adjusting their voice naturally) shows that a reader is making sense of what they’re reading.

🎙️ Podcast Episodes with Fluency Experts

If you want to learn more about fluency, start with these four must-listen podcast episodes featuring some of the leading researchers in oral reading fluency. You'll walk away with some new insights and a stronger understanding of what fluent reading really looks like.

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Fluency Instructional Routines

Now that you have a strong foundation in what fluency is and why it matters, let’s look at some practical ways you can build fluency every day in your classroom. Fortunately, experts like David and Meredith Liben, authors of Know Better, Do Better (2019), make it clear: students improve their fluency when they listen to skilled readers model fluent reading and engage in repeated readings of the same text.

The good news? You don’t need fancy materials or complicated programs to make this happen. You just need simple, consistent routines.

Here are four concrete ways to bring the research to life in your classroom:

• Modeled Reading: You read aloud while students track the text with their eyes. Hearing fluent reading helps students internalize accurate word pronunciation, appropriate pacing, and expression.

• Echo Reading: You read a short sentence or passage aloud, and students immediately echo it back. This allows students to hear fluent reading and immediately practice it themselves.

• Choral Reading: You and your students read a short passage together in unison. Choral reading offers a low-stress, supportive way for students to build fluency with peers.

• Partner Reading: Pair a stronger reader with a developing reader. One reads aloud while the other follows along in the text, then they switch roles. Partner reading gives students extra practice and the opportunity to hear fluent reading modeled by a peer.

Important Tip:
No matter which strategy you use, make sure students can clearly see and follow the text while they read! 

🎙️ Podcast Episodes to Dive Deeper into Fluency Instructional Routines

Want to hear real-world examples of how teachers and researchers bring these routines to life? These four podcast episodes are packed with practical strategies you can start using right away!

🎭 Readers' Theater: Fun, Effective, and Research-Backed

Now that you know some simple fluency routines, let’s explore a strategy that makes fluency practice both effective and joyful: Readers' Theater. Readers' Theater gives students the chance to perform by reading scripts aloud. Most importantly, students repeatedly read their scripts to prepare, providing the focused practice that research shows is essential for improving accuracy, rate, and prosody (Honig, Diamond, & Gutlohn, 2018).

Tim Rasinski reminds us that students need opportunities to perform and be creative with their voices, and Readers' Theater gives them a real, meaningful reason to practice reading with expression. Chase Young’s research shows just how powerful this can be: students who participated in Readers' Theater not only improved their reading skills, but those with the greatest need made the biggest gains (Young, Mohr, & Landreth, 2020). Amazingly, students said they didn't believe the practice could improve their reading because it was too much fun!

🎙️ Podcast Episodes to Explore Readers' Theater

Wondering how to incorporate Readers’ Theater into your fluency instruction? These episodes are packed with ideas on how to make it work in your classroom!

📖 Fluency for Older Readers: Why It Still Matters

Let’s take a closer look at why fluency matters beyond the primary grades and how we can support it. It’s a common misconception that fluency instruction is only for young learners. Jan Hasbrouck reminds us that even when students master phonemic awareness, decoding, and sight word recognition, they may still struggle to read at a sufficient rate, and that’s where fluency intervention can make a real difference.

But, as Jan cautions, the goal isn't speed; it's quality reading: “We don’t want to help them read fast… we want them to read well” (Episode 153). Improving fluency for older students means focusing on two things:

• continuing to strengthen word recognition, especially for multisyllabic and unfamiliar words 
• ensuring students are reading with meaning, paying attention to phrasing, pacing, and expression

Tim Rasinski also points out that fluency instruction shouldn't stop after early elementary grades. Even as students shift to more silent reading, oral reading fluency and silent reading fluency are deeply connected (Episode 62).

As texts become longer, more complex, and vocabulary becomes more challenging in upper elementary, middle school, and beyond, fluency practice remains essential for building strong comprehension. Students who continue working on fluency are better equipped to tackle the demands of increasingly difficult academic texts.

🎙️ Podcast Episodes to Support Fluency for Older Readers

Fluency instruction isn’t just for younger grades. These episodes focus on what works for older students in upper elementary, middle, and even high school settings.

As you can see, fluency isn’t just one skill. It’s a combination of reading skills that unlocks real comprehension. Let’s wrap up with why fluency is so critical for every reader, at every age.

Fluency truly is the bridge between decoding and comprehension, and the better we understand it, the better we can support all readers. Research consistently shows that oral reading fluency is a powerful predictor of reading success. When students read fluently with accuracy and automaticity, they can focus fully on making meaning, just like experienced drivers focus more on the journey than the mechanics of driving. Throughout this blog, we’ve shared practical strategies to strengthen fluency instruction, and if you’re ready to learn more, be sure to check out all the podcast episodes we highlighted. They’re packed with expert insights and practical classroom routines to help every student become a confident, fluent reader.

📘 Check out the Fluency chapter of our book: The Literacy 50–A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night

✳️ Want an even easier way to listen to all of these episodes? 🎧 Check out our

Fluency Playlist on Spotify and start listening today!