Assessing Fluency

When assessing students in fluency and word identification there are many things to consider. First of all, it is important to think about who the students are as individuals because not every student will be at the same level so the starting point for assessments can be different. Also, assessments need to be completed over a period of time, from the beginning to the end of the year in order to really track the growth of the students. When teachers administer fluency assessments they need to be assess each of the critical parts including word reading accuracy, rate and prosody. One of the best ways to assess students fluency is through oral reading. This helps teachers to hear the students sound out/decode words they may not be familiar with. Teachers can use reading records to record student accuracy when reading and address it with the student so they can see how they are progressing. In assessing that rate of student reading teachers can test how quickly students can identify site words and decode unknown, nonsense words. This can show the teacher the processes that students are going through and how accurately they are able to use strategies for decoding. Recording students so that they can hear themselves read is also a good tool to use. A lot of times what students hear in their heads is different from what others hear. When they hear a recording of themselves they can see where they are making mistakes and they can also see common mistakes that keep happening. The main thing to keep in mind when assessing fluency is that is ongoing and cannot be done once for conclusive evidence of improvement. Teachers need to take the time and put in the effort in order to determine how well their students are progressing.