Teaching Students about Reading: A Fluency Example.

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discuss the elements of reading instruction which are necessary for success with students who have not benefited from indirect or implicit instruction. Most articles which cover this ground do so in terms of comprehension (Dole, Duffy, Roehler and Pearson,1991; Pressley, Johnson, Symons, McGoldrick and Kurita, 1989;Spiegel, 1992) or, more rarely, word and letter identification (Cunningham and Cunningham, 1992). Reading fluency, often perceived as a rather mechanical skill, is generally ignored in the literature on modern effective instructional techniques,despite its importance. Many of the proven instructional techniques for fluency are described elsewhere (Allington,1983; Anderson, 1981; Dowhower, 1989; Henk, Helfeldt, and Piatt, 1986; Koskinen and Blum, 1986; Moyer, 1982; Rasinski,1989), but they are treated as stand-alone methods without the integration of comprehension, metacognitive knowledge, and student insight which are considered absolutely essential for long-term success.