Three Fluency Interventions Compared

            I’m always optimistic that I will see student improvement at the beginning of a new school year.  If you work with young elementary students, then you probably know the feeling of anticipation and trepidation that the first round of DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) benchmark testing brings each September.  As scores come in, I see some of the improvement in reading fluency that I was hoping for, but I’m also reminded that fluency improvement is a year-long process for my students and the challenge begins now.

            As a special education teacher with an interest in reading disabilities, my blog will explore reading fluency research and instruction.  There are many approaches to teaching fluency, and therefore, I was excited when I came across an article comparing three different approaches to launch my study of this topic.  In Increasing Elementary-aged Students’ Reading Fluency with Small-Group Interventions: A Comparison of Repeated Reading, Listening Passage Preview, and Listening Only Strategies, the authors looked at three small-group fluency interventions (Begeny, Krouse, Ross & Mitchell, 2009). Using struggling fourth grade reading students from one small-town school, the study design had the students undergoing a rotation of three different interventions in a contained classroom away from interruptions. (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 216-17).  

            The results of the study showed effective interventions with the repeated readings method having the most gains in fluency:

·      Repeated Readings used one student to lead the reading of the passage as the other students read out loud along with him or her.  The instructor told any unknown words to the group. After the first reading, a new leader took over and the text reading repeated.  Assessment took place after two readings.  (Begeny, et al., 2009, p. 218-19).  The students showed more retained gains in fluency from the Repeated Reading method. (Begeny, et al., 2009, p. 221).

·      Listening Passage Preview had the instructor model reading a passage while students followed silently along with their own copy of the text. The instructor had students show with a finger that they knew the words being read to them.  Right after hearing the text, each student was taken to another room where he or she individually read the text out loud (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 218). The Listening Passage Preview method was second to the Repeated Reading method in words correct per minute (WCPM) increases and was more effective in retained gains for some students. (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 223).

·      Listening Only which had students listen as an instructor read a passage twice (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 219) had the least immediate and retained fluency gains of the three interventions. (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 223).

            This study supports the practice of using small-group instruction to help increase reading fluency by having students either listen or read passages several times.  (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 224).  As the most successful of the three, Repeated Readings and Listen Passage Preview may work for Tier 1 and Tier 2 RtI for students struggling with fluency.  (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 224).  Additionally, using Repeated Readings is an attractive option because it needs few resources to impact the fluency needs of more students.  (Begeny et al., 2009, p. 224).

Here is the APA citation for the article:

Begeny, J. C., Krouse, H. E., Ross, S. G., & Mitchell, R. C. (2009). Increasing elementary-aged students' reading fluency with small group interventions: a comparison of repeated reading, listening passage preview, and listening only strategies. Journal of Behavioral Education, 18(3), 211-228. doi:10.1007/s10864-009-9090-9

Here's the link to the article:

https://ezproxy.western.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ852478&site=eds-live