Reading Fluency
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The stages

The Reading Fluency stages

The assessment tells you the stage where a child’s reading needs building right now. That decides everything else.

Two children read a book as they walk a woodland trail past nine trees, from a silver birch to a cedar

How a child achieves a stage

  • Birch is achieved on accuracy alone: 95 per cent at any speed.
  • Every stage after Birch carries a words-correct-per-minute band. A child achieves it at the band minimum with 95 per cent accuracy in the same read. Both halves matter.
  • Accuracy gates everything. Below 95 per cent, the finding is “this text, today, is too hard”: drop a stage and check again.
  • Children read text at the stage they achieved in the assessment. If a child achieves a stage, that is the stage they should be reading at, not a sign that they need the next stage up.
  • Yew Entry shares Hazel’s band on purpose: a child meets harder text before being asked for a faster pace as well.

The nine stages

  1. Birch95%+ accuracy, any speed
  2. Willow31–45 WCPM
  3. Hazel46–60 WCPM
  4. Yew Entry46–60 WCPM
  5. Yew61–75 WCPM
  6. Chestnut76–90 WCPM
  7. Oak91–110 WCPM
  8. Sycamore111–130 WCPM
  9. Cedar131+ WCPM
Each stage, its words-correct-per-minute band, its Story Trail pattern and its books in the shop
StageWords correct per minuteStory Trail patternIn the shop
Birch95%+ accuracy, any speed––
Willow31–45 WCPMshort pattern–
Hazel46–60 WCPMshort patternHazel books
Yew Entry46–60 WCPM: Hazel's band, on harder textshort pattern–
Yew61–75 WCPMtwo-week unitYew books
Chestnut76–90 WCPMtwo-week unitChestnut books
Oak91–110 WCPMtwo-week unit–
Sycamore111–130 WCPMtwo-week unit–
Cedar131+ WCPMtwo-week unit–

Dawn Chorus poetry covers every stage, Birch to Cedar, in the app.

Story Trail books in the shop

More titles are planned up to Oak.

Find your children’s stages

The assessment places each child in 2 to 3 minutes. The Handbook explains the whole method.

Run your first assessment freeSee the Handbook