Reading Fluency: The Missing Link in Primary Reading Development
The Puzzle
Eighteen months ago, we were celebrating a major win at Fetcham Village Infant School - we'd improved our phonics check scores to 83%. This past June brought another win: 94% of our Year 1 children passed the phonics screening check.
Our systematic phonics teaching was working. The data proved it.
But we noticed something odd. Children who'd passed phonics screening brilliantly in Year 1 - solid decoders, knew their GPCs - were getting stuck on the higher-level phonics books as they progressed.
Not because they couldn't decode the words, but because they couldn't read quickly enough to make sense of longer, more complex sentences.
Their decoding was perfect. Their fluency wasn't.
These weren't struggling readers. At least, not in the traditional sense. They had solid phonics. They could sound out unfamiliar words. They were doing everything we'd taught them to do.
But they weren't reading.
The Gap Between Decoding and Comprehension
This is where most schools miss it.
We spend years teaching phonics. Systematic, synthetic phonics. Evidence-based. Research-backed. All good.
Then we jump straight to comprehension strategies. Retrieval. Inference. Prediction. Summarization.
But there's a bridge between decoding and comprehension that we're not teaching explicitly enough: reading fluency.
What Is Reading Fluency?
Reading fluency is the ability to read accurately, smoothly and with proper expression (prosody).
It's not just about speed. It's about reading with the cognitive resources free to actually think about what the text means.
When a child is still laboriously decoding every word, they don't have the mental bandwidth left for comprehension. By the time they reach the end of the sentence, they've forgotten the beginning.
Fluency is what allows decoding to become automatic - freeing up working memory for the real work of reading: making meaning.
The Simple View of Reading
The Simple View of Reading tells us:
Reading Comprehension = Decoding × Language Comprehension
Both factors must be present. If either is zero, comprehension is zero.
But there's a critical detail most people miss: fluency sits right in the middle.
You can have perfect decoding skills and strong language comprehension. But if you're not fluent, text comprehension still suffers.
Why Schools Miss This
Here's why fluency gets overlooked:
We assume it develops naturally. We think that once children can decode, fluency will just happen with practice.
We don't assess it systematically. We do phonics screening. We do reading comprehension tests. But how many schools are tracking WPM (words per minute), accuracy, and self-correction rates? How many track smoothness and expression?
It takes time. Traditional fluency assessments take 15-20 minutes per child with paper-based methods. That's time most teachers don't have.
We confuse fluency with ability. We see a child reading slowly and think "struggling reader" rather than "needs fluency practice."
What Changed for Us
When Jamie Hallums, our School Learning Improvement Partner, brought this problem to me, we started assessing fluency systematically.
Jamie introduced us to the concept of reading fluency assessment and teaching as a distinct, measurable skill that sits between phonics and comprehension.
Not just "can they read the words?" but "how are they reading them?"
We tracked:
- WPM (Words Per Minute)
- WCPM (Words Correct Per Minute)
- Accuracy percentage
- Error types (omissions, insertions, self-corrections)
The data was revealing.
Children who "couldn't comprehend" weren't struggling with understanding language. They were struggling with automaticity. They were spending so much cognitive effort on decoding that they had nothing left for meaning-making.
What We Did About It
I'm fortunate to work with an incredible team at Fetcham Village Infant School.
Sophie Birrell, our Reading and Phonics Lead, helped me understand what fluency assessment needed to look like in practice. Sophie's expertise in early reading was crucial in ensuring our approach was developmentally appropriate and teacher-friendly.
Gareth McGovern, our Assistant Head and Year 2 Lead, worked tirelessly with Sophie, developing teaching strategies and techniques to improve children's reading fluency. Along with Emma Wright, our Deputy Head and Assessment Lead, they helped pilot our first fluency tracking systems. Their feedback on what actually works in a busy classroom shaped every decision.
Together, we made fluency practice a core part of our reading curriculum, not an intervention for struggling readers.
Here's what that looks like:
Repeated reading practice. Children read the same passage multiple times until they hit fluency benchmarks.
Paired reading. Stronger readers model fluent reading for developing readers.
Regular fluency assessments. Every half-term, we track fluency metrics for every child.
Targeted support for non-fluent readers. Before they fall behind in comprehension.
The Results
Within one term, we saw measurable improvements:
- Average WPM increased by 15-20 words across Year 2
- Comprehension scores improved
- Children reported enjoying reading more (because it wasn't exhausting)
- Teachers could identify struggling readers earlier
But more importantly, we stopped having children who could decode but couldn't comprehend.
Most importantly: children are becoming less stuck.
Why This Matters for Your School
If you're only assessing phonics and comprehension, you're missing the bridge.
You'll have children who pass phonics screening but struggle with reading. You'll wonder why your comprehension scores aren't improving despite solid phonics teaching.
The answer is fluency.
How to Start
You don't need expensive programs or resources. Here's how to start:
Assess fluency. Take 2-3 minutes per student to do a one-minute timed reading. Track WPM, errors, and self-corrections.
Set benchmarks. Research-based fluency benchmarks exist for each year group.
Identify non-fluent readers. Not just "struggling readers" - any child below fluency benchmarks.
Build fluency practice into your curriculum. Not as intervention, but as core teaching.
Track progress over time. Fluency improves with practice, but only if you're measuring it.
The Tool We Built
After implementing fluency assessment at Fetcham, something became clear: every school faces the same problem. Very few were solving it.
After a year of paper-based assessments and manual calculations, we built ReadingFluency.co.uk.
It does everything we were doing manually in 2-3 minutes per student:
- Automatic WPM/WCPM calculations
- Color-coded error tracking
- Real-time marking of errors, omissions, and self-corrections
- Historical data for every student
- Clear intervention pathways based on fluency patterns
- Excel and PDF export for parents and leaders
We built it for our school. Now we're sharing it with yours.
The Bottom Line
Reading fluency is not optional. It's not just for struggling readers. It's not something that develops naturally without attention.
It's the missing link between decoding and comprehension.
If you want children who can decode and comprehend, you need to teach and assess fluency explicitly.
Because children deserve teachers who can see the full picture of their reading development.