20 Fluency Activities

To move from basic word decoding to true reading comprehension, students need fluency: the ability to read words at an appropriate speed, accurately, and with expression. When students achieve automaticity with these key skills, it frees up their mental space to focus on vocabulary, comprehension, and higher-order thinking skills.

However, teaching phonics, high-frequency words, and punctuation alone isn’t enough to develop students’ reading fluency.

Students also need targeted practice that is designed to improve their accuracy (reading words correctly, without adding or skipping words), rate (reading at an appropriate and consistent speed), and prosody (reading with appropriate expression, with attention paid to key elements such as rhythm, intonation, pitch, pauses, volume, and emotion).

That’s why we’ve pulled together 20 of the most effective reading fluency activities in a helpful guide! Complete the short form on this page to download your free copy of 20 Powerful Fluency Activities, or keep reading to explore sample activities from the guide.

1. Fluency for Early Emergent Readers: Letter Name Fluency Flashcards

Developing fluency and automaticity starts in kindergarten, although at this stage, fluency looks very different than it does in later grades.

For early emergent readers, developing automaticity starts with letter naming. Create a set of flashcards showing uppercase and lowercase letters. Have children practice naming letters until they can do so quickly and accurately. Pay attention to any letters where children consistently struggle.

2. Reading with Accuracy: Word Fluency Flashcards

Before students can read full sentences, they need to be able to read individual words with fluency. Flashcards are a great way to practice word-level fluency!

Create a set of flashcards for each phonics pattern being taught. For example, when teaching CVC words, such as the word families -en and -et, create flashcards with the words pen, men, den, ten, set, get, net, bet, met, and pet.

You can model the activity as a whole class or in small groups, revealing flashcards one by one and having students read the words aloud. Students can then continue practicing in pairs.

3. Reading with Expression: Punctuation Fluency Flashcards

Fluency is more than reading with speed and accuracy: students must also learn to read with expression, often taking cues from punctuation.

Create a set of flashcards that show the same one-word sentence three times, once with a period, once with a question mark, and once with an exclamation mark. For example:

• Hello. Hello? Hello!
• Goodbye. Goodbye? Goodbye!
• Yes. Yes? Yes!
• No. No? No!

Explain that the sentences with periods should be read with an even voice, those with question marks read with a rising intonation, and those with an exclamation with strong feelings. Have students practice reading the three sentences with appropriate intonation.

As students progress, you can mix the different flashcard sets. Add short sentences (for example: It is a big cat. Is it a big cat? That is a big cat!) for an additional challenge.

4. Reading Aloud: Teacher Modeling

All students need to hear what good fluency sounds like on a regular basis. While they will hear you read aloud frequently during lessons, storytime, and other activities, be sure to set aside time for explicit modeling sessions.

For each reading, start by explaining to students the purpose of the modeling. Especially for younger students, it can be helpful to have each model session focus on only one element: accuracy, rate, or prosody.

For example, when modeling reading with appropriate speed, you may want to introduce the activity as follows: “It is important to read at the right speed, not too fast and not too slow. If I read too fast or too slow, it will be hard to understand what I am saying. But if I read at just the right speed, it is much easier to understand.”

Tip: It can also be helpful — and fun! — to show students what poor fluency looks like. For example, read a passage at-an-extremely-rapid-pace and then ask students how much they understood. You can also… read… at… a… very… slow… pace… and then ask students if it was easy to pay attention and follow along.

5. Reading Aloud: Student Pair Reading

Once students can read words fluently, it’s time to move on to longer passages, such as sentences and paragraphs. Always make sure you are picking appropriate texts for read-aloud activities, based on students’ grade level, skill level, background knowledge, etc.

Once texts have been selected, divide students into pairs (or, if you have an odd number, into trios).

Students will alternate reading aloud to each other. Students may switch after each sentence, paragraph, or chapter. Encourage students to provide each other with kind feedback, with a particular focus on complimenting their partners’ strengths.

Get Your Free Reading Fluency Activity Guide

Be sure to complete the form at the top of this page to get your free copy of 20 Powerful Fluency Activities! Inside, you’ll find additional reading fluency strategies for building and practicing students’ reading rate, reading accuracy, and reading prosody.

Looking for more ways to strengthen your students’ foundational reading skills, such as phonological awareness, phonics, and fluency?

Try Savvas Essentials® : Foundational Reading!

Designed to support and enhance your existing core literacy instruction, Foundational Reading is a supplemental K-2 literacy program that targets all foundational reading skills: print concepts, phonological awareness, phonics and high-frequency words, and fluency.

With explicit instruction, multisensory activities, and both print and digital practice options, Foundational Reading can help give every student a strong start in learning to read.