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Reading fluency has been identified as a key component in reading and in learning to read. Moreover, a significantly large number of students who experience difficulty in reading manifest difficulties in reading fluency that appear to contribute to their overall struggles in reading. In this article we explore the nature of effective instruction in fluency. We examine proven methods for teaching fluency as well as instructional routines that combine various methods into synergistic lessons. We also take issue with more mechanical approaches to fluency instruction that emphasize reading rate as the major goal of such instruction. Instead, we attempt to make the case for more authentic approaches to fluency instruction, approaches that employ texts meant to be practiced and performed.On the surface James did not appear to be a poor reader. When he read grade-level material he was able to read all of the words accurately, and he knew the meanings of the words he read. His reading was full of effort-he labored over individual words and read them in a slow and unexpressive manner. He was significantly above average when tested for his overall intelligence and receptive vocabulary. When a passage was read to him, he understood it well. However, when he read it on his own, it was very likely that he would not understand much of what he had just read.This type of student seems to defy conventional wisdom or explanation. Good word decoder, high verbal intelligence, good vocabulary, capable of

This study describes the development and validation of the Homan-Hewitt Readability Formul~ This formula estimates the readability level of single-sentence test items. Its initial development is based on the assumption that differences in readability level will affect item difficulty. The validation of the formula is achieved by (a) estimating the readability levels of sets of test items predicted to be written at 2nd-through 8th-grade levels; (b) administering the tests to 782 students in grades 2 through 5; (3) using the class means as the unit of analyses and subjecting the data to a two-factor repeated measures ANOVA. Significant differences were found on class mean performance scores across the levels of readability. These results indicated that a relationship exists between students' reading grade levels and their responses to test items written at higher readability levels.