Kindergartners read slowly. I was teaching Greg, a 5 year old child, how to sound out consonant-vowel-consonant words like sat, hip and bam. As soon as he could read, he started sounding out decodable books. Greg elongated each sound just as I taught him: Sssss-aaaaa-mmmmm… Sam. This meant he said each word 2x: once to say the sounds, and another to blend the sounds together.
Sam read 4 words per minute.
This may seem slow, but this rate is normal for a beginning kindergartner. Many kindergartners read between 6-20 correct words per minute. It’s not uncommon for kids who are just beginning to say 4 words per minute, and then get faster from there.
Many parents and educators begin worrying about their student(s) when they see their slow fluency rate. Parents and educators try to fix a student’s slow reading rate with inappropriate tactics: this can actually backfire and make the child read worse later on.
When it comes to fluency, so many people focus on what to do. How do we get the child to read faster? they ask. This is the wrong question for so many reasons. I’m not going to get into those reasons right now, but in sum: you can’t. No program (sorry you can’t convince me) can make a child read faster. Instead, kids need explicit, systematic phonics instruction. Then, kids need to read A LOT. That’s right, there’s no quick fix for fluency. The only way to get a child to read faster is to get him to read A LOT.
This is why kids need access to a variety of decodable books. Kids need to develop fluency for each phonics sound.
When you want to improve the fluency of a kindergartner focus on the following:
- Never encourage the child to read faster. This will cause him to make errors. You want to teach your student to read accurately first. Accuracy is most important.
- Don’t have your student read the same text 3x in a row. For some reason, many fluency programs do this. Repeat readings give educators and students the illusion of fluency: of course the child is reading faster, because he’s memorized the passage. Instead, space out readings by at least 24 hours. Beginners can read the same decodable 3x, just space out the readings.
- Lengthen the decodable text time of instruction. If you’re concerned about fluency, make sure your student is reading a lot. This means, if your reading portion of the lesson is 15 minutes, lengthen it to 20 minutes. As children learn more phonics sounds, you can encourage them to read more.
- Be patient. Let your child sound out the words slowly. He will eventually get faster. Kids can sense when we want them to hurry up. Focus on letting your child take the time he needs to read accurately.
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