Impact of Classroom-Based Fluency Instruction on Grade One Students in an Urban Elementary School

Timothy V Rasinski,William Rupley,Kelly Greene,David Paige,Kelly Foerg,Chase Young,Randy Yates

doi:10.3390/educsci10090227

Abstract

The present exploratory study examined the effect of the implementation of a reading fluency instruction protocol on the reading performance of early first grade students in an urban school. Previous research has tended to examine the effects of fluency instruction after students have achieved some degree of competency in word recognition, usually toward the end of first grade and beyond. The fluency instruction provided in this study included repeated and assisted reading and was delivered daily over a ten-week period in the first semester of the school year by classroom teachers. The reading performance of students in the fluency instruction group (n = 51) was compared with a comparable group of first grade students (n = 27) who did not receive the fluency instruction, though the total number of minutes devoted to daily reading instruction and home reading was equal between groups. Descriptive analyses of pre- and post-testing data suggest that the first grade students receiving the fluency instruction made substantive, but not statistically significant, gains in reading achievement over the comparison group of students not receiving fluency instruction. The results suggest that dedicated and systematic fluency instruction may be appropriate for students before high levels of word decoding are achieved and that fluency instruction may be an effective instructional protocol as early as the beginning of first grade. Given the acknowledged limitations, including small sample size, further research into fluency instruction in early first grade is recommended.

Highlights

Lack of adequate progress in reading achievement among elementary grade students in the UnitedStates continues to be a major concern
Recent reports in the public media [51,52] have argued that phonics instruction is a necessity for reading and that current phonics in American inadequate
Recent reports in success the public media haveinstruction argued that phonicsschools instruction is aproficiency necessity for reading success and that current phonics instruction

Summary

Introduction

Lack of adequate progress in reading achievement among elementary grade students in the UnitedStates continues to be a major concern. The most recent (2019) National Assessment of Educational. Progress (NAEP) [1] reported that 34% of children entering kindergarten are lacking in basic language skills that promote reading acquisition and 64% of fourth graders read below grade level. These statistics have not changed substantially over the past 25 years. This stagnation in reading growth leads to a probable conclusion that instructional factors that promote early reading development are either missing or are receiving less-than-optimal emphases in many curricular reading programs.

Methods

Results

Conclusion