Practical insights from a serving Headteacher on reading fluency, assessment and primary education.
Reading fluency is one of those terms that gets used constantly in education but rarely gets defined clearly. This article provides a clear, research-based definition and explains why it matters so much for comprehension.
We've been trying to build fluency with texts that are too hard. And it doesn't work. For children who know their sounds but find 'age-appropriate' texts laborious, try this: make it easier, not harder.
If traditional running records take 10-15 minutes per child, assessing 30 children means 4-7 hours of assessment time. That's why fluency gets pushed down the priority list. Fast assessment changes everything.
In March 2024, Ofsted published findings from 50 schools showing a systematic gap between decoding accuracy and reading fluency. More than 25% of pupils enter secondary school below expected reading standards, despite having secure phonics knowledge.
The 2018 NAEP study found that the biggest gaps between struggling and proficient readers weren't in word recognition accuracy - they were in automaticity and prosody. Here's what UK schools can learn.
Eighteen months ago, we were celebrating a major win at Fetcham Village Infant School - we'd improved our phonics check scores to 83%. But we noticed something odd happening as children progressed through the reading scheme.
