The Role of Automaticity in Reading and Test Taking

The discussion of fluency instruction is nothing new in the elementary world, but lately middle and high school teachers are beginning to see the benefit of a fluency awareness at this level as well!

In a webinar by Dr. Timothy Rasinski, a well-known expert in this field, he begins to lay out the importance of focusing not just on the idea of fluent reading, but more importantly on automaticity.  He stated that:

• ·      67% of students who perform poorly on state mandated high stakes reading comprehension test exhibit difficulty in reading fluency (specifically word recognition which equals automaticity).
• ·      25% of the variance in silent reading comprehension on a state assessment given through sixth grade attributed to fluency (word recognition/automaticity).
• ·      25% of young adults lack basic literacy skills required to get a job.

Could a lot of this be prevented from a more focused instruction in word recognition and automaticity? Dr. Rasinski suggests providing students with “guided wide reading” as well as “guided deep reading”. To best develop automaticity a student must experience “intensive, wide and deep, guided and targeted instruction and practice.” Students at all levels must be able to read text in a reasonable amount of time and fully understand what they have read. This impacts a student’s development as a reader as well as their ability to complete high stakes assessments in the mandated time frame. To learn more about this follow the link to the free webinar and article.

Free webinar at http://www.scilearn.com/blog/tim-rasinski-reading-fluency

Wiesen, N. (2013, April 23). Why Dr. Timothy Rasinski Thinks Reading Fluency Should Be "HOT!" Retrieved March 27, 2015, from http://www.scilearn.com/blog/tim-rasinski-reading-fluency