What is it?

Fluency is the ability to read, speak, or write easily, smoothly and with expression. In reading, fluency skills are the ability to see the "big picture" rather than reading word for word. Reading fluency is often associated with smooth and even-paced reading.

Here are some examples of fluency skills:

• Immediately recognizing letters and frequent clusters of letters.
• Learning frequent words by sight
• Seeing phrases as whole thoughts

What is its purpose?

Strong fluency skills let readers read a story in larger "chunks" (i.e. in phrases). This improves reading comprehension by allowing the reader to concentrate on the meaning of the words rather than on the reading of them. Strong fluency skills are closely related to strong phonics skills. A strong sight vocabulary (words the reader knows on sight) helps to improve reading fluency.

How will these skill activities help?

For McFeeglebee's Pond, we have two rhyming activities - Seeking Rhyming Words and Seeking Rhyming Words - the Sequel

With both activities, the purpose is to help the reader identify common sound patterns by highlighting the rhymes found in the story. These activities are closely related to the Phonics Activities, but rhyming words do not necessarily have to have the same spelling pattern. For example, street and meat rhyme, but do not have the same spelling pattern. .

Here is a link to learn more about Making Words:

The definition of Fluency and the examples used in this overview were obtained at:

• http://gamma.sil.org/lingualinks/library/literacy/glossary/cjJ416/krz939.htm
• http://members.home.net/joeparsons/Fluency.html

OnLine Reading Tutor - Free advice for helping children with reading problems given by an experienced teacher.

• http://members.aol.com/djennfam/OnLine_Reading_Tutor/index.html